DB email received saying 'journey not possible anymore, find alternative connection'

Question

Travelling from Amsterdam to Copenhagen on 8th August. An email received on 25 July from DB says to find alternative connection for our journey because of a timetable change but the info on their email shows a connection we did not book. First leg and final leg match our journey but the second leg has a different train listed though the times are the same.

First leg 1000 hours Amsterdam to Osnabrück Hbf ICE 145

Second Leg /journey 1323 hours Osnabrück Hbf to Hamburg Hbf says ‘ICE 2532 Direction Hamburg Hbf’ however this is not the train I have a booking for. We booked /have a reservation for the ICE 202 arriving Hamburg 1515 hours.

Final leg/journey is 1628 hours Hamburg Hbf to Copenhagen on the RJ 13462 Direction Koebenhavn

Following the link on their email I get to a page that has a link to the pdf for our original reservations and further below the seat reservation info there is then a heading saying ‘Your alternative travel itinerary on Sat 8. Aug 2026’ and when I click on the ‘details’ it gives the details of the original journey/trains we booked for all three legs. (So does this mean our original journey is ok and listed as an alternative because they have a different train for our second leg ?)

Further below it says ‘Original Itinerary’ and the details of this itinerary exactly match the ‘Your alternative travel Itinerary ‘ detailed further up.

I am confused and I do not know whether I need to look for other connections. I have emailed DB to ask but a few days have passed and no response.

I looked on DB for an alternative journey and our original booked journey does not come up. None of the train connections are the same as our booked travel itinerary and the ones listed all have more changes involved.

Should I book an alternative itinerary and pay for new reservations as it says ‘high demand expected’ on the route with the fewest changes. And will DB refund the original reservation fees if indeed the original booking does run. Annoyingly when I had a look at the alternatives there are some short change overs and when I increased the time the reservation fees went up from 6.90 Euro to over 165 Euros in each of the different journey’s listed.

It is the bit in the that says ‘Your alternative travel Itinerary ‘ and then lists what I booked and the fact that the email shows a leg that does not match our booking that is confusing me.

Appreciate any guidance from the community on this.

rvdborgt · Answer

If you get such an e-mail, then always check the DB planner, which is what you did. That will tell you what is really running. The e-mail may or may not contain a sensible alternative, or show anything useful at all (apart from the warning that there's a change).

A few things have changed since you booked because of engineering works:

ICE 145 is not running via Osnabrück anymore. It is diverted.
ICE 202 is not running its entire route anymore. There's a replacement train ICE 2532 for most of its route.
RJ 13462 leaves 2 minutes later from Hamburg Hbf (and yes, DB would send a mail about that, since it's a change).

Your reservation on ICE 202 is not transferred automatically to ICE 2532.

You could theoretically still travel at 10:00, change at Rheine to Osnabrück and then use ICE 2532 and RJ 13462 as originally planned. However, the changes are short, DB punctuality is not great, Hamburg-Copenhagen has a lot of disruptions, and your planned arrival time is 22:02. I'd leave Amsterdam at least 2 hours earlier (with ICE 143), so you have some room for things going wrong. By default, the DB planner now shows an 8:06 departure (passes not valid) and an 8:31 departure (with a very short change at Oberhausen).

I'd take ICE 143 at 8:00, travel to Hamburg as fast as possible (changing at Rheine and Osnabrück) and then ECE 394 to Copenhagen. You can get this itinerary from DB if you enter a stopover in Hamburg of 1 hour. Increasing the change time in Hamburg from the default results indeed shows the regular price; that must be a bug.

You can either call DB to rebook free of charge, or book new reservations yourself and get a refund of your reservations from DB after your travel date by going into your account and making a claim from your original booking. There you add the new reservations as extra costs because of their change.

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