Travel information to RE'02 held in Essen, Germany Sept. 2002

Weather: At the moment we have some rainy days, but we hope it will get better during the conference week. For more information see: Weatherforecast (Due to the special topography floods can not be expected here).

Here are some infos regarding your travel to the Conference. It takes place at the AUDIMAX in the University of Essen. Depending on the preferred kind of transport you may want to travel to Essen by plane, by train or using the car.

Travel by plane:

The nearest international airports for reaching Essen are Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. You can also use Cologne, which, however, has less frequent international connections. Once you arrived at one of the airports the best way to get from there to Essen is to use the dense train system in Germany.

There is a good train web page which provides detailed travel information, even in English. Please visit http://www.bahn.de and click "Travelservice" on the navigation bar on the left hand side. Generally, location names (e.g. names of stations) on this site have to be entered in German.

"Essen main station" is your first (intermediate) stop during your travel from your airport and it is called "Essen Hauptbahnhof" or "Essen HBF" for short.

Here some details for travelling from Frankfurt Airport to Essen by train (about 2h travel time)

At www.bahn.de (Travelservice) enter "Frankfurt(M)Flughafen Fernbf" without quotes in the From-field and "Essen HBF" in the To-field. Enter appropriate departure or arrival date / time and press the "search connection" button.

If you use the new German high-speed train ICE3 travel time from Frankfurt Airport is about 2h (reservation needed), the train station is located in the basement of the airport.

Here are some details for travelling from Düsseldorf Airport to Essen by train (about 30 mins):

The train station you should use is not the one in the basement of the airport (this is only for south bound regional trains) but please get onto one of the free shuttle buses (or the monorail "Sky Train", if you can use it until then) to the "Flughafen Bahnhof". From there frequent train service is available.

At www.bahn.de (Travelservice) enter "DUESSELDORF FLUGHAFEN (DUS)" into the From-field and "Essen HBF" in the To-field. Add the appropriate date / time as well.

Here some details for travelling from Cologne Airport:

This is slightly more complicated since one has to take a bus to the city center first, where in the neighbourhood of the Dom Cologne Main train station is. From there you get to Essen by train.

Again use www.bahn.de (Travelservice) to find your appropriate connection, however due to the additional bus ride travel time is about 2h.

Enter "Flughafen Koeln/Bonn Terminal 1, Koeln" or Terminal 2 depending on your arrival spot in the From-field and "Essen HBF" in the To-field plus date / time and the system will deliver a schedule for your journey from Cologne Airport to Essen mains station.

So once you have arrived in Essen Hauptbahnhof there are a number of choices to get to your hotel or to the conference venue. There is a dense public transport system, which is mainly an underground system in the area of the inner city. Unfortunately the electronic system to generate schedules is in German only. However, the ride will be short anyway and you can also take a taxi from the main station. Please contact your hotel if you need further directions (see hotel overview).

Travel by train

Please use the electronic system www.bahn.de to generate your personal schedule. Click on "Travelservice" to get to the page where you can enter start and destination of your travel to Essen. The system accepts even street names but in general it will be the best way to enter "Essen HBF" (Essen main station) as destination. From there you can either take the local public transport system (mainly underground) or a taxi (see also above).

Travel by car

Germany and especially the Ruhr area enjoys (or suffers) a very dense street and highway system as well. So you could use one of the available routing systems on the web.


Last updated: 2002-05-27