I Tried a First Class German Train – Was It Worth It? (Frankfurt to Paris)

I Tried a First Class German Train – Was It Worth It? (Frankfurt to Paris)

6:27 in the morning. Rolling my suitcase down the chilly morning streets of Frankfurt to the main train station on about 4 and 1/2 hours sleep to take a high-speed train over to Paris. The kind of adventures that we sometimes sit back and wonder why did we do it? Well, my friends, the answer is clear. We do it because it makes us feel alive. I’ll share the experience with you, including what the train is like, including the station here in Germany and arriving in France. I will be riding first class today, which will be appreciated because I am very tired. I also hope I can get a nice German sandwich uh and coffee before my train departs because my train departs at uh 6:57 I think 6:57 a.m. Um this is an enormous train station and I’m always impressed how how Europeans can seem to show up like 5 minutes for the train and always find it. I like a bit more time because I’m from Canada and we don’t have huge stations like this. So, takes me some time to navigate. If I can find it. Yes, there it is. Perry est, as they say in French, Paris East Station 17 is probably the track number. We’re off to a good start. Now, breakfast. This place has croissants. I’ll probably have some of those waiting for me in Paris, so I will. Hello. Uh, I butter pretzel. That’s all. And one coffee. Um, coffee. Small, medium, or big? Medium. delicious German pretzels at that place. This was uh approved by a German who told me that if you get the butter pretzels, you’re guaranteed that they’re fresh out of the oven and it’s a nice uh local snack to have. So, I’m happy to end my time in Germany with one of those. Also got a little sandwich. Also got a morning coffee, of course. I also see there’s a McDonald’s. There’s a I think there’s a Starbucks and a few other familiar options around here. But for a quick snack on the go. I don’t think you can do much better than this place, can you? Now, I’m going to quickly make it over to my uh train platform, but first a couple words about this train station. As you can see, it’s it’s 6:30 in the morning, and look at all these people. It’s definitely used very prominently in the lives of a lot of Germans. The building itself, um, it looks kind of ominous at night, but during the day you get a lot of sunlight coming through this kind of industrial style roof, very distinct architecture. Okay, looks like this will be easy. Platform 17, Paris Est. The train is already there, so I should be able to board smoothly. Um, but things in Germany are often not as smooth as you might imagine. Uh, I don’t mean to offend any German viewers, but I think they will know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen situations where you think you have the right boarding platform, you think you have the right train, even the number can be the same, but at the last moment they decided to change your train’s number or change the platform or like something equally confusing. I’ve seen two trains on the same platform going to the same place at almost the same time. And actually, that happened to me my first time in Germany. I got I got on the wrong train on the right platform to the same destination. So anyway, all I’m saying is uh if you’re not sure, double or triple check. Just ask one of the people standing around. I’m sure they will help you get to the right destination. And today the right destination is Paris. DB Deutsches band highspeed train. So, I know I have first class. If anyone else is struggling with their German WG26, that is the car. PT22 is the seat. Here you can see 26. That’s my car. It seemed to go directly from number 29 to 26. So, it doesn’t mean it it counts the way you might expect it to, but you can find it easily. And uh Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Seat 22. Oh, nice little dining car area. Ah, looks like this is the cafe. So, I have the cafe right behind me um in case I hadn’t had a chance to uh grab my my coffee and my pretzel, but nice to know this is nearby if I need it. First impressions of the seats, I would say it it is obviously a bit more spacious than you have in the other classes, but it’s not a huge difference. Um yeah, comfortable seats. [Music] 40 minutes into the journey and we just made our first stop in Mannheim, a little German city between Frankfurt and the French border. We’re going to have one more stop in Germany and then the next stop will be Strawburg, which I’ve heard is a very pretty French city close to Germany. So, there are stops. It’s definitely not a direct uh train to Paris, but um yeah, as you can see, we’re we’re they made an announcement saying we’re right on time. Everyone gets off very quickly, boards very quickly. So, if you’re not experienced with trains like this in Europe, you really need to know when your stop is because it’s a very quick process when they make these stops, especially the stops in the the smaller stations. Though, Matt Mannheim isn’t too too small. I can definitely see a few tracks out there on this Tuesday morning. But yeah, I just went to the uh the dining car to give you a little look what this looks like. So far, it’s been a pretty smooth ride. I’m going to sit back and enjoy and I will talk to you soon. Hello again. Just uh holding my microphone because the train is kind of noisy in this area. But uh I just moved through the dining car into the um secondass area which I mean as you can see here are the seats. They look a little bit different uh than the first class seats but overall I would say very small differences and that’s also reflected by a very small difference in price. I only had to pay €14 to get the upgrade to first class. So, I decided to try it out. It’s now about 10:00 a.m. So, we’ve been going about just over 3 hours. We’re about 100 kilometers outside of Paris to the east of Luxembourg and of course Germany. Just give you a quick look at the luggage area that you have. Not tons of space, but definitely enough space for a few bigger suitcases. Well, welcome to Paris. My ticket arrival time said 10:38. We pulled to a gentle stop at exactly 10:35, 3 minutes early. As we pass by one of the French trains, the TJV, uh, I’m going to leave you with a few final thoughts here. I think my verdict on the first class is you can probably skip it. Like I said, it was only €14 more. My ticket went from 99 up to €113. that to me seemed worth it just to have a new experience. But based on what I saw of the secondass seats really wasn’t too much difference at all. I think the main difference is that the uh the food people uh the food and drink people come by and ask you if you would like any food or beverages brought to your seat. So if you like that extra bit of hospitality, it might be worth it. But for me, there was no difference. Now, actually, I just remembered um I have one more mission today, and that is I’m going to try to find somewhere to uh to leave my suitcase for the next 5 hours or so cuz I have a flight out of Paris at 7:00 p.m. tonight. So, I’m going to try and find somewhere to store my luggage so I can explore the city. So, if you’re curious how that works, uh hopefully I can find something. The bit of research I did said there are storage lockers in this train station. Oh, that was actually incredibly easy to find. There is the symbol for the luggage. For some reason, I thought it would take me like forever to find this place. Uh, but that was easy. Well done, Paris train station. It was a very confusing uh very French experience in there. You know, it was like 20 confused tourists all trying to get their machines to lock and then there was like one sleepy security guard who like he wasn’t going to help anyone, but there was no one there to help. Um we just had to figure out on our own. And if you if you are actually using that, I I recommend you to use the the more modern lockers that have a touchcreen. The the old ones I like I literally have no idea how how those work. I would say when it comes to situations like that, France can be a confusing country, perhaps more so than Germany, but when it comes to the beauty of the train stations, I think France is the clear winner. But that’s why we travel, isn’t it? Every country has its own things to offer. Thank you for traveling with me today and joining me on today’s video. Check out my other videos if you’re interested. Click subscribe. As always, I’m Dan from The New Travel. Thank you for watching. Safe travels and I’ll catch you next time.

00:00 – Adventure Awaits
00:36 – Frankfurt Train Station (Hauptbahnhof)
01:42 – Food Options
03:07 – A Beautiful and Busy Train Station! Europe at its best
03:40 – A Warning About German Trains
05:04 – Boarding the Train
05:48 – First Impressions of ICE Train
06:34 – The Train Journey
08:16 – Dining Car Options
08:38 – First Class and Second Class Seat Comparison
09:40 – Arriving in Paris
10:13 – Was First Class Worth It?
10:53 – One Final Mission – Luggage Storage
12:22 – Paris Train Station (Paris Est)

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