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Belgium

Mannheim-Bruxelles in 1972, and what it tells us about Mannheim-Bruxelles today

Jon Worth

• 2 min read
Mannheim-Bruxelles in 1972, and what it tells us about Mannheim-Bruxelles today
db-loco

I stumbled across this little gem on Facebook - posted by Peter Osten (one of my predecessors as President of JEF Europe) and reproduced here with his permission.

It is a rail ticket from April 1972 Mannheim Hbf - Bruxelles return, and it cost DM 95.20. Look at it closely and you can see the ticket was valid for a 2 month period, and - as far as I can tell - there is no seat reservation included.

So how does this compare to such a trip today?

Let's turn DM 95.20 into Euro first - that is €48.67, at the rate when the Euro was introduced. But let's then work out what €48.67 in 1972 prices would be in 2024 prices.

For that we can use this Inflation Calculator - that goes back that far. And it gives us an answer: €191.70

Now can you make a Mannheim Hbf - Bruxelles return trip today for €191.70? Well, it gets complicated.

A Flexpreis, 2nd class, which is the closest available ticket Deutsche Bahn sells is a hell of a lot more - it's €147.30 single or €294.60 return.

However in 1972 there were no Bahncards. Add a BahnCard 50 to the booking and you end up with €190.80, pretty much exactly the price from back then.

But the major change has been the introduction of yield pricing - book ahead and get what Deutsche Bahn calls Sparpreis and you can manage to get amazingly cheap offers. Were we to travel to Bruxelles on 14.04.2024, 52 years to the day after Peter's ticket were bought, booking it today, and returning a week later, without any Bahncard, we could manage it for €39.90 each way, or €79.80 in total - or just 42% of what Peter paid back then.

Is this better or worse than the situation in 1972? I don't know. It is at least very different. You could make a case that the cheaper yield managed tickets open up rail travel to groups in society that could not have afforded it in 1972, or make the case that the lack of flexibility that these tickets necessitate mean rail travel has adopted some of the inflexibility of the airline business. But it's a neat little example to show us what has changed.