Hamburg to the Kiel Cruise Port: Drive It One Way or Take the Train?

Deutsche Bahn’s page gives the fastest Hamburg–Kiel train as 1 hour 7 minutes, with about 48 connections a day; its sample fares ran from €17.98 for a saver to €34.00 for a flexible ticket on the fast train; check the day you travel. Those are examples from one day’s search, not a fare table — book and see.

The Deutschlandticket costs €63 a month, sold only as a subscription, and covers regional trains and city transport but not IC, EC or ICE trains. It’s a monthly subscription — it suits a long stay, not a weekend.

The train arrives at Kiel Hauptbahnhof, about a 15-minute walk from Ostseekai by AIDA’s reckoning.

A car takes 70 minutes on empty roads and then has to go back somewhere — the train takes 1 hour 7 and doesn’t.

For two people heading straight to an Ostseekai sailing, take the train.

The defaults: two travellers, one day at our assumed €45 (about US$50), collected in Hamburg and dropped in Kiel — €45 before fuel and before any one-way fee.

Fill the pump box with ADAC’s €2.258 and the 61 miles add about €17, our arithmetic.

Two seats at DB’s €17.98 saver sample come to €35.96, about US$40; two at the €34 flexible sample, €68.

The car only wins when the fares are high or the group is big. Or when it has another job after the ship.

Set the drop box to your real one-way fee before you trust the total.

Enterprise charges a one-way fee whenever the car goes back somewhere else; the amount “varies based on car category, location and pick-up date” and appears during booking — and that’s the most any brand told us.

None of the Kiel or Hamburg pages we read printed an amount, so we haven’t put one in the calculator.

Discover Cars shows the one-way fee in the total when you set different pick-up and drop-off places — the quickest way to see the real figure.

Pick a drop-off desk that’s staffed when you arrive. Enterprise Kiel is shut on Saturdays — the hub’s weekend section lists who isn’t.

Our one-way rental guide covers drop fees across cruise ports.

Get the fee in writing before you choose the car over the train.

From Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, Ostseekai is 60.9 road miles (98.0 km) and Ostuferhafen 64.0 miles (103.1 km), by our routing.

Ostseekai has short-stay spaces for dropping off passengers and bags; you register with staff at the entrance — drop the bags and passengers there, then return the car in town.

Ostuferhafen is the harder one to reach without a car — on the east bank, across the water from the station.

Drop a group there and the car still has to reach a station desk, about 5.0 road miles back to town by our routing. The driver then needs the bus out again.

So the car argument is stronger for MSC and Costa passengers than for TUI and AIDA.

As we read Germany’s environmental-zone list, none is active in Kiel, Hamburg or Lübeck, and Lübeck says no sticker is required. Hamburg lifted its street-specific diesel restrictions in September 2023. Check the city’s page before you drive in.

If you’d rather keep the car for the week, the hub prices Port Parking at each quay.

Search with Kiel as the drop-off — the one-way fee then shows up in the total, not at the counter.

Search your dates: Kiel pick-ups vary by day, and the one-way fee shows in the total.