Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof

Very large and very busy train station. Good signage / everything is labeled. Kinda dirty but should be expected for a large transportation hub. The limited staff we engaged with spoke enough English to help. Trains are clean.

The 3.5 star rating is due to the surrounding area outside. You'll see many homeless people, some women with strollers asking for money and lots of trash. This is definitely a central hub in the city and it does have a large variety of eating shops (there's Pret-A-Manger, McDonalds, sushi, Starbucks & Dunkin Donuts, Coffee Fellows, and various other restaurants and convenience stores).
The Europcar is also located inside which was very convenient for us to pick up our rental car since our hotel was just across the street.
There's so many people passing through, both tourists and residents commuting to work. Just be aware of your surroundings. At times I felt a little afraid when getting off the subway later at night. But since there's so many people around it was ok.

Reviewing a train station is like reviewing an airport, if it works and is clean it's great, and if you have any issues it starts going downhill pretty fast. To be honest I went back and forth between three and four stars for this one, read one to hear why.

First of all let me say, this train station is massive, and is not unlike other European train stations I've been to in France, The Netherlands, and Belgium. To me, they all have very similar vibes, and my favorite part is always the soaring glass ceilings that remind me of those industrial revolution Monet paintings. But now I'm getting off topic. The wayfinding here in Frankfurt is pretty great. I have to say one of the strengths of this one is how easy it is to find your platform, regardless to the massive size of this place. It also has a large selection of food offerings, and in general feels pretty safe for a station of this magnitude. That being said, I was here during the day and I'm sure at night it might have a different vibe.

What was challenging for us was the ticketing situation. I encountered this all over Germany and it was no different here, the main electronic ticketing booths are really challenging to use in English. While you can tell it where you want to go and do a search really easily, it will always come up with several options, all in German, and all without explanation on what makes them different. It also doesn't communicate well to you what platform you need etc. Overall, unless you've travelled in Germany before you might have some issues if you just use the machine. We knew this and planned in some extra time at the station the morning we were departing for our next town so we weren't stressed, but it did take much longer than I think it should have to get it all sorted. First of all we asked an attendant for help and he told us to take a ticket and wait for a booth. We did this but it was taking ages and that's when we went back to the machines to see if we could figure it out while we waited for our number to be called. While doing this I overheard another attendant helping another group on the machines and once he was done with them I asked him for help. This person was amazing - so helpful, friendly, and even printed out a secondary slip that had our platform number printed on it since the ticket did not include that information. If it wasn't for him this would have been a three star train station for sure, but his kindness and ability to help really enhanced the situation for us.

Overall, expect this place to feel a lot like other European train stations in big cities. If you need assistance at ticketing I highly recommend looking for the station attendant that is there to help with the electronic machines as it will be much faster than taking a ticket to go to a booth. That, or look for a friendly traveller to help you. It's really hit or miss with the folks working at the station if they have the time or patience to assist you.

Large, modern train station in Frankfurt. There are plenty of signs directing you to the correct train platform. There are lots of places to buy food as well. The bathroom is clean, and costs 1 Euro.

If train stations were politicians then Frankfurt Station would be Trump. Old, cold and useless. Btw, u had better speak German otherwise you ain't going no where. German inhospitabality everywhere . Someone should shut this place down rapidly.

Postscript, the trains scheduled to leave here as Inter City Express (ICE) are either late or cancelled and, when they do leave, they are oversubscribed so God help you if you reserved a seat as u can be sure someone will already be sat in it because the train company cancelled all reservations when they had to double the bookings due to previous trains being cancelled. They will offer no comp' either. It is beyond belief that they even managed to keep the service running but, foshaw, they rake the money in.
I often use the term 'trainwreck' to refer to bad service and now I know why. I can see where the term originated.

For such a large station I thought this would be better connected. It just feels like a huge open space, and it's not very efficient to navigate around. There are a good amount of shops around though, so there's no issue there, and you can't really go hungry because there are so many options. But not many places to sit around.

Place feels a bit old and jank, but I guess that gives some more historical vibes to the station.

It's a train station, whoopty-do, right? Well, sort of..... it is genuinely a hub for all thing Frankfurt. Not only are the trains extremely efficient (this is Germany, after all!), they go in all directions and you are never aware of it! There is a car rental area and parking garages underneath...who knew, because the entrances seem to be cleverly concealed away from any foot traffic out of the place! There are restaurants and a few shops on the main levels, but it is literally a whole other city below ground...The first time I experienced it, my mind was blown!

It's iconic facade, with the 5 arched windows, make it a great landmark for anyone not familiar with the city....meet me at the train station, under the middle arch! Seriously, I've said that to someone I was meeting up with from Stuttgart.

I don't know, I just really like this station and everything about it. Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's a longing to go back to see my friends, but I know that I never feel out of place when I'm there.....

14/2021

I think Frankfurt's public transportation system might be the most difficult to navigate in the world. This train station has a couple of different types of trains - think underground vs long-haul trains, etc. Getting to these different areas of the train stations to take the right train is easy, the signs are extremely clear. Going on long-haul trains are also extremely clear because the direction they are heading to and on what platform is easy to understand. Riding the "underground"/short-haul train though, is another story.

For these short-haul trains, you are able to walk immediately onto the train as there are no gates to check your ticket. Because of that, it is on your onus to buy these tickets yourself and these ticket systems are kind of spread throughout the station so its hard to get one. Beyond that, the trains are quite unclear as it is quite difficult to understand which direction they are heading towards. In addition, they are not always on time as noted by Google and the digital notice system. We had to wait up to half an hour before and that was not a pleasant experience.

The train station itself was beautiful, reminds me a lot of London's St. Pancreas Station which its high window arches. If you're going on a long-haul trip, definitely take off from here, but otherwise, maybe think again.

This is a good train station and it's easy to get to anywhere from here and even to the airport too.

It's a huge hub and many people come through here. I have often flown in and from the states from Frankfurt and taken the hour train from here to Cologne.

It's easy to navigate, it's big enough to offer many food and convenience options but still feel small enough that's it's not so overwhelming and the signage is great here too.

One of the bigger train stations in Germany. There are decent food options here though not necessarily good food. But overall very clean though there are some homeless people that wander through here and will ask you for money.