Best to get acquainted with it! I love you, Munich, and I actually love to travel on your generally-excellent public transport. We can wander lost through the Munich S-Bahn system forever, until we become ghostly from the lack of sunlight, and German mamas tell their kids scary stories about das S-Bahn geist. Or I can tell you how to buy single day or 3 day tickets in a simple, illustrated guide, and you can travel the city like a pro.
Who dis? DB stands for Deutsch Bahn. Deutsch Bahn is your city-to-city, overground trains. U-Bahn is your standard subway system. Think New York subway, or London Underground. It operates below the surface of the city center. S-Bahn is a hybrid service β it serves as a local overground train system throughout the suburbs of Munich, but then descends underground and uses the same system as the U-Bahn in the city center.
Makes sense? The U-Bahn covers just those very central stations, right in the middle of the city. Happily, you buy tickets for the U-Bahn in almost exactly the same way as the S-Bahn , so if you need Munich U-Bahn tickets you can use this guide too!
Okay, this is one of the more confusing, and stressful, elements of working out which ticket you need. So here comes the simple version. Basically, the map of Munich has four big concentric rings drawn over it. Again, pretty handy for visiting Dachau.
So how do you work out which district you need? If your stop is on this map , congratulations! Munich laughs at your pain. Still here? So it saves you a bit of money in comparison to buying a bunch of single tickets, but you have to know to fold the ticket correctly in order to validate it. This will be the first screen you see.
