The train drivers' union GDL is calling for a strike in freight traffic from 5 p.m. today.

Passenger traffic is then also affected for five days from Thursday morning at 2 a.m. to Tuesday morning of the coming week.

The railway wants to try to keep at least a quarter of the usual range of services on offer in long-distance transport.

But the third strike in a few weeks will hit hundreds of thousands of commuters and travelers again.

So what can you do if you are affected too?

Check alternatives

During the strike, Deutsche Bahn is calling for long-haul travel to be postponed if customers do not necessarily have to travel. The information on train cancellations can be found on the Deutsche Bahn website and is constantly updated. There are current traffic reports here and the actual departure times for each individual train and station - or even failures - can be checked here.

The replacement timetable for long-distance traffic is also available in the timetable information on the Deutsche Bahn website and in the DB Navigator app.

Information can also be called up on mobile phones at mobile.bahn.de/ris.

For the reduced offer in long-distance traffic, particularly heavily used connections have priority, for example from Berlin to the Rhine / Ruhr region, from Hamburg to Frankfurt (Main) and the connections to important train stations and airports.

A basic offer is to be maintained.

After the strike call on Monday and Tuesday, the railway had also gradually published replacement timetables for regional traffic in its traffic reports.

In the online timetable information and the DB Navigator app, however, some of them should not be available until Wednesday.

Information on the phone

The free service hotline of the railway at 08000/996633 has also been back in operation since 7 p.m. on Monday.

There is also an interactive chatbot on the website.

The permanent service number 030/2970 (normal telephone tariff) recorded longer waiting times before the strike due to the corona situation, according to the railway.

This should also apply to the travel centers at train stations, whereby the corona distance rules must be observed when queuing.

The railway wants to deploy hundreds of additional employees at the stations during the strike days, to whom travelers can turn.

There are also 400 video travel centers available.

Like all other travel centers and agencies at Deutsche Bahn, you can find them here.

Use other means of transport

If all else fails, travelers will have to switch to other modes of transport. Many are likely to switch to the car, but this could require patience due to the increased traffic. For those who do not have a car, there are other alternatives: You can also travel from city to city by long-distance buses. There are a number of long-distance search engines for orientation. Long-distance buses are not expensive, a trip from Hamburg to Berlin is available for as little as 7.99 euros, of course many connections are more expensive at such a time. In the past, Deutsche Bahn organized taxi or long-distance bus trips from larger train stations.