19.11.2024

Deutschlandticket | the 49-euro ticket app from Deutsche Bahn

Building design

Traveling by train with the Deutschlandticket. Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

The Deutschlandticket for 49 euros per month is coming. It also comes with its own app and many questions. We clear them up!

A special app has been developed for Deutsche Bahn’s new 49-euro ticket. This app will allow the Germany ticket to be purchased as a subscription. The app is due to be released this week.

The dispute over the Deutschlandticket was huge and again lasted forever. Months passed before the federal and state governments were able to agree on the implementation of the Germany-wide rail ticket for all. We now know that the Deutschlandticket will be available for 49 euros per month. The ticket will then be valid throughout Germany for local and long-distance travel. However, as with the 9-euro ticket, you will have to limit yourself to regional trains. The popular ICE train cannot be used with the ticket.

Deutsche Bahn has now had a special app developed for the Deutschlandticket. The developer Mobility Inside announced that the app will be released this week in the Apple App Store and on Google Play under the name “Dein Deutschlandticket”.

It should then be possible to take out a subscription to the Deutschlandticket in the app within a short space of time. The subscription can also be canceled there. However, the app offers even more. In addition to the Deutschlandticket subscription management, you can also use a Germany-wide timetable information service for local and long-distance transport as well as Deutsche Bahn’s bicycle, e-scooter and car-sharing services.

You read that correctly. If you use “Dein Deutschlandticket”, you can only purchase the 49-euro ticket as a subscription. Even though the subscription can be canceled on a monthly basis, many potential users will certainly take offense at this. Advance sales for the Deutschlandticket are due to start on April 3, 2023. It is also not transferable because it is personalized in the app.

The Deutschlandticket app is not a mandatory requirement for using the 49-euro ticket. The ticket can be purchased in the well-known Deutsche Bahn app “DB Navigator App” as well as at Deutsche Bahn points of sale. In addition, the Deutschlandticket will also be offered for sale by many transport associations. Anyone who already has a current subscription with a local transport company that runs beyond May 1, 2023 can hope that this subscription will be automatically converted to the 49-euro ticket. However, not all transport associations will do this, so it may well be that customers will have to take action themselves and deal with the respective transport association.

In summary, there are the following options for purchasing the 49-euro ticket:

Deutschlandticket app “Dein Deutschlandticket”
At a Deutsche Bahn point of sale (as a chip card)
Printed out on paper in the initial phase
In the “DB Navigator App”

The Deutschlandticket will be available and valid throughout Germany from May 1, 2023. As mentioned, advance sales will begin on April 3 and it will cost 49 euros per month.

The Deutschlandticket was adopted by the federal government with the third relief package. The cost is 49 euros per month. Following the enormous success of the 9-euro ticket in June, July and August 2022, a permanent alternative offer was to be created.

However, “permanent” is one of those things. In the relief package, the Deutschlandticket is initially designed for just two years. After this time, a decision will be made on how to continue. This was apparently intended to keep an exit strategy open. In addition, it will probably not stay at 49 euros for long, as the Deutschlandticket is to be adjusted for inflation. It is therefore likely that the price will increase in the coming year.

The Deutschlandticket is valid on all German local and regional transport. This includes subway trains, suburban trains and streetcars as well as city and regional buses and ferries. Like the €9 ticket, the €49 ticket is only valid for second class and not for IC/EC and ICE trains. It is also not valid on selected trains that are heavily used by tourists, such as the Zugspitzbahn. However, a few international routes can be traveled with the ticket, such as

Austria: to Salzburg and Kufstein
Switzerland: to Schaffhausen and Basel
France: to Lauterbourg and Wissembourg in KV
Netherlands: to Enschede and Venlo
Poland: to Swinemünde

When it comes to Deutsche Bahn, the countless critics are not far away. Apart from the fact that a large proportion of trains in Germany do not run punctually and therefore reliably, the entire rail service is extremely prone to breakdowns. Regular train passengers are just as annoyed as spontaneous passengers. Deutsche Bahn seems to have been a case of restructuring for years. The impression arises that the company is sinking extreme sums of money into questionable measures, but is not working on the structural issues. As most of the more frequently used connections are already completely overloaded at peak times and are regularly unusable, it seems questionable how the company intends to cope with the increased volume of passengers. Frightening images from the days of the 9-euro ticket give rise to fears of the worst.

However, it remains to be seen whether the 49-euro ticket will lead to an increase in passenger numbers. Many people consider the price to be far too high for the barely discernible return service. Many passengers are deeply frustrated and commuters in particular have now switched back to their cars. Reliable arrival at morning appointments seems to be an impossibility with the train. An additional app, which was only developed for the 49-euro ticket, is unlikely to change this.

It’s great that the new ticket is coming for the whole of Germany. Unfortunately, 49 euros is still too much money for many people and the ticket will probably not change the poor performance of Deutsche Bahn. However, people in large cities will probably benefit most from the ticket. They will now receive a cheaper monthly ticket for public transport and can use it to travel in all other cities. This is more convenient and cheaper than before. Commuters, regular rail passengers and all those who want to get from A to B quickly will probably not benefit much.

11.11.2024

Event

Architecture Biennale 2021: In the Austrian Pavilion

Building design

Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters takes you to the 2021 Architecture Biennale in Venice.

Editor-in-chief Fabian Peters is currently in Venice. He is taking you on a tour of the pavilions, like here in the Austrian Pavilion.

In their project, the two curators of the Austrian pavilion, Peter Mörtenböck and Helge Mooshammer, examine the manifestations and effects of platform urbanism. As part of their research, they have ultimately identified and categorized the physical manifestations of the digital and platform industry that are typical of the times with great precision. To present their findings, Mörtenböck and Mooshammer chose different forms of presentation – both artistic and more documentary. The artistic approaches to the topic include the two slogans that greet visitors at the entrance to the two wings of the pavilion: “Access is the new capital” and “The platform is my boyfriend“.

An installation of stools has already been set up in front of the pavilion, allowing the words “we like” to be read from a distance and in an extremely “instagrammable” way. The stools are the kind of DIY furniture that can be found in countless internet companies today – especially those that have long since outgrown start-up status. Dozens of examples of such contemporary phenomena are depicted on two walls of the pavilion in the form of patent drawings – from the Corporate Campus and the Co-Working Headphones to the Food Truck and the Vertical Forest to the Corporate Bus and the Pop-up Container Market. They leave the interpretation of their findings to the visitors, who can stretch out on the pavilion terrace on the currently ubiquitous outdoor lounge furniture.

01.11.2024

Trick

Otto Dix in Colmar

Building design

A major Dix exhibition is currently running in Colmar. It focuses on the reception of the Isenheim Age by the German artist. A highlight of the show has been restored for the occasion. An insight. Since the beginning of October, the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, has been showing the major special exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” and is exploring the extent to which […]

A major Dix exhibition is currently running in Colmar. It focuses on the reception of the Isenheim Age by the German artist. A highlight of the show has been restored for the occasion. An insight.

The Unterlinden Museum in Colmar, Alsace, has been showing the major special exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” since the beginning of October and explores the extent to which Otto Dix’s work was influenced by Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. At the same time, the museum is also honoring the 125th anniversary of the artist’s birth and the 500th anniversary of the mural altar, the museum’s main attraction, which is on permanent display there.

“I saw the Isenheim Altarpiece twice, an enormous work of unheard-of boldness and freedom beyond all composition or construction and inexplicably mysterious in its contexts,” wrote Otto Dix to his wife Martha on September 9, 1945. This letter can be seen with more than 100 works by the painter at the Museum Unterlinden. Paintings, drawings, prints and archive material from all over the world, including loans from major public collections such as the Musée national d’art moderne in Paris, the MoMA in New York and the Vatican Museums.

The Isenheim Altarpiece, created by Matthias Grünewald in the 16th century, has inspired many artists such as Böcklin, Klee, Baselitz and Picasso since its rediscovery in the late 19th century. However, Dix referred to the Isenheim Altarpiece throughout his work, emphasizes curator Frédérique Goerig-Hergott.

Restored highlight

One of the highlights of the exhibition is the triptych “Madonna in front of barbed wire” from the Maria Frieden church in Berlin-Mariendorf, which is rarely lent out and has been restored by the museum’s conservators. It is the last triptych painted by Dix in 1945 and was intended for the Catholic chapel of the prison camp where Dix was sent shortly before the end of the Second World War. It shows the Virgin and Child as well as St. Paul and St. Peter in front of a crowd of prisoners of war and a landscape of houses destroyed by the war. “The most important part of the restoration was to check the adhesion of the paint layer and to locate any areas at risk of flaking. We also carried out a light cleaning of the paint layer, which meant minimal intervention in the paint substance,” explains restorer Carole Juillet. The wooden panels are in excellent condition and have been primed with gesso to prevent the wood from warping.

Examination of the painting revealed three different overpaintings. The oldest overpainting can be found in the area of the sky and the clouds in the middle panel. The overpaintings on the panel with St. Peter in the area of his cloak and in the area of Mary’s dress could be by Dix himself. The technique in oil/tempera is similar to that of the entire triptych. Juillet continues: “We have benefited greatly from this loan, as it is always interesting to be able to study an artist’s painting technique at close quarters and thus contribute a piece of the mosaic to Otto Dix research.”

Interested parties can view the restored painting with its overpaintings and its reference to Grünewald in the exhibition “Otto Dix – Isenheim Altarpiece” until January 30, 2017.