I left the Ibis hotel in Dortmund just four and a half hours before my flight to Katowice left, so that was positively cutting it fine as far as I’m concerned. I had a vague plan of how to get to the airport and since I’ve done this before, albeit in a different way, I didn’t think much about it. Although therein lies the first problem….
Dortmund Stadthaus isn’t perhaps likely to win any design awards for the frontage, despite the efforts made with the mural above it. Anyway, my plan was to get a U-Bahn from here to near the airport and walk the 50 minutes to the airport itself.
I get to the railway station ticket machine and notice that there’s a cheap ticket to the airport as one of the options. I knew that there was a more expensive train to the railway station, but I refused to spend that much and liked the idea of the cheaper ticket that I hadn’t thought about.
So, I leave the station and walk twenty minutes back to the central station. It was a nice walk, but I’m not entirely sure why I did that. What actually happened here is that this cheap ticket is the combined U-Bahn and bus to get to the airport, I hadn’t realised that’s what they meant, I think I thought there was a cheaper train direct to the airport from Dortmund Hauptbahnhof.
I got to Hauptbahnhof and downloaded the app to buy a ticket, having by this time worked out how the ticket worked. I missed the train that I needed as apparently they need an address in Germany to buy the ticket. I have no idea why they have this requirement, so I slightly grumpily walked back to the ticket machine to buy it there instead.
And here’s the U47 to Aplerbeck. This doesn’t actually go the airport, but they’ve sensibly signed it to make clear that it’s the one to get to be able to connect to a bus that does go there directly.
Safely on board the U47 and it was only at this point that I realised the train went through Dortmund Stadthaus, where I had been an hour before. This explained why they sold tickets to the airport from there, namely, because the train to the airport went from there. Logical really.
The U-Bahn stops at Aplerbeck and passengers then get off and walk around 50 metres to the bus stop.
Rather oddly, the buses were only once every hour, although fortunately, I only had a wait of fifteen minutes. I was there on a Sunday, so perhaps the service is less regular then, but it was a busy bus when I got on.
On the bus and I was able to get the front seat, I still get a childlike sense of excitement about that.
I liked that there was a button there which is by the window of the front seat, as often buses don’t have anything nearby (I don’t think many people spend time worrying about things like this). This is a minor design detail, but sometimes the simplest things are the best.
And safely at the airport with just two hours to go before the flight. Perilously close I tell you… Anyway, everything went smoothly despite my faffing about. The moral of this entire, and slightly dull, story is that the direct train costs nearly €10 whereas the combined train/bus costs around €4, so I liked the latter one best.