Cologne Bonn Airport ground transport

The name is not a marketing flourish: this airport genuinely serves two cities, and the railway station under Terminal 1 makes both straightforward. The S13 and S19 run to Köln Hauptbahnhof in about fifteen minutes and to Bonn Hauptbahnhof in about twenty-five, every twenty minutes, for roughly €3.20 to €4.00 under the VRS tariff. Cologne's station is directly beside the cathedral, so you walk out of it into the main sight — an arrangement few cities manage. Bonn, the West German capital until 1999, is the other direction and no less easy. Two local facts shape arrivals here. First, CGN is one of very few German airports without a night flight ban, because it is a major cargo hub — so passenger arrivals at two in the morning are routine, while the S-Bahn at that hour is not. Check the last train before assuming it will be there. Second, the taxi tariff is unusually transparent: a €4.00 base, €2.10 per kilometre for the first seven, €1.90 after that, which is why the Cologne run lands consistently in the €40 to €50 range and the Bonn run a little above it. Cologne itself is a Roman foundation with a Gothic cathedral that took six centuries to finish, a brewing culture with its own beer and its own serving ritual, and a carnival that shuts the city for a week each February. Bonn has Beethoven's birthplace and the museum mile built for a capital that no longer exists.