Yes, sorry, I had something like "getting from Berlin to Brussels at low cost" in mind. There is no way to do it with railway, only with a plane.

If I just want to travel in the same Bundesland where I am, there are plenty of cheap options, that's true.

How low cost do you want low cost to be, and how annoying are you prepared for it to be? I just picked (fairly arbitrarily) Monday 19th August, and although Expedia does offer a GBP18 Ryanair flight SXF - BRU you have to accept an 0620 departure time to get that, and of course no checked baggage and you need to include costs of getting to/from the airport. Given the need to arrive at least 1h before departure I would personally not even consider 0620 dep, and all the other flights Expedia suggests cost 90 quid or more. For the train loco2.com has one-way tickets Berlin Hbf -> Bruxelles-Midi from GBP63.50 at reasonable times.

As an American, I can only dream of having convenient train fares of about USD$80 to go between somewhat-distant cities. Berlin to Brussels for GPB63.50 (about $80 right now) sounds downright cheap to me.

Same here, I've been to Brussels quite often (for FOSDEM) and the difference is:

- flying: 120 EUR from Munich, getting up at 4-5, arriving at 9

- train: have to go the day before, have an additional night in the hotel (70 EUR) and THEN the train is more expensive than flying anyway. Maybe not so important if the company pays, but still not fun to argue (depending on the company).

Rubbish. I've travelled Berlin to Brussels (and then London) by train. It was very pleasant.

Sometimes you get a group of loud people around celebrating something, like soccer cup or getting married (especially in the connections with Regionals). Also last year there were often delays and problems in the connections between Mannheim or Frankfurt; I wouldn’t just call someone’s comment rubbish.

For every ride like that, you could get a teenaged school class flying in your plane.

While you're technically right, the MUC-BRU flight is 90% businesspeople in suits on the smallest regular plane I've ever used, I can't imaging TXL-BRU being different.

I.e. the chance of it having a school class in it is like winning the lottery ;)

25€ is not dirt cheap, unless you're planning on taking 4+ trips on a single day. In Belgium, a prepaid ticket for 10 rides, each from/to any station in the country, costs just 75€ (valid for one year).

As an American, 25 Euros is absolutely dirt cheap. We can't travel between nearby cities for anywhere near that cheap here.

The 75 Euro deal sounds really cheap too.

According to the Amtrak site, you can go from NYC to Washington DC for $53. That's more expensive, but not tremendously so.

I've looked for fares like that and never see them at convenient times. At 4AM 3 months from now, sure. That's not convenient.

I tried planning out a weekend trip from DC (where I live) to NYC on Amtrak, and I couldn't make it work. The goal was to travel to NYC without flying, and without having to take time off from work (I work normal 9-5ish, flex hours). The only way to get fares cheaper than by airline is to take the train at 5AM or so. But the train station is downtown; I can't get downtown in time to catch the train by Metro (subway), because the Metro doesn't run that early. So I'd have to take a Lyft/Uber, which is expensive. If I go at a more convenient hour, the rates shoot way up, so it's more expensive than flying.

Sure, I could take a day or two off from work, but that defeats the point. If I wanted to travel between Frankfurt and Munich on a weekend without taking time off from work, or between Tokyo and Osaka, I could do it more cheaply and easily than DC-NYC.

I guess the issue is more for intercountry rail travel.

Also pretty pointless in terms of business travel:

I've hardly ever had any customers not in Munich or in the Nuremberg (area) that weren't so far away from the station that you'd need a taxi, so you can drive anyway. Especially for conferences. Usually Munich or Nuremberg.