Friedrichshafen Transportation

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Friedrichshafen has its own airport and you can fly from there to a lot of interesting destinations all over Europe, see my link below.
Something special that you will hardly find at any other airport worldwide is the fact that in a seperate part of the airport modern Zeppelins or rather Blimps will start their flights over the Bodensee every day. I am not sure that they will take any passangers, they mostly are ment for advertising (see it in my main picture).
The airport is next to the Dornier-museum !

You will get easily by car to Friedrichshafen over the scenic road along lake Konstanz / Bodensee from Konstanz or from Lindau.
Once that you are in Friedrichshafen you will find a lot of parking-spaces next to the port, where you will also find the zeppelin-museum, the train-station and the old part of town, that is worth seeing as well.
In my picture: a Maybach Zeppelin, one of the strongest cars of its time. Mr. Maybach built all engines for the Zeppelins and so he was given the priviledge to add the name Zeppelin to this car by his friend, Graf Zeppelin.

There is a carferry from Friedrichshafen in Germany to Romanshorn in Switzerland and that way you can save a lot of time, depending into which part of Germany / and or Switzerland you are travelling to or from.
This ferry is able to take several buses, big trucks and lots of ordinary cars all at the same time, but at certain times you might have to calculate some extra waitingtime for that ferry as well.
For timetables and pricelist please click on my link below !
This ferry docks just in front of the Zeppelin-museum !

By far the nicest way to explore Bodensee (Lake Constance) is by ferry. There is an extensive network of ferry routes crisscrossing the lake, which services a limited number of towns on the Swiss side as well as many more towns on the German side.

Konstanz is the hub of BSB's network, and other larger towns such as Meersburg and Friedrichshafen have frequent ferry services, whereas smaller towns and those at the extremities of the lake are not serviced as often.

However, bear in mind that it is a large lake, and travelling by ferry is much slower than making the same journey by road - for example, Konstanz to Lindau (which is pretty well end to end) will take you about 3.5 hours.

The weblink below is the BSB timetable for summer 2010 - unfortunately this is currently only available in German, but much of it should be pretty self explanatory. The website promises that it will be available in English in 'a few months', but I have no idea if and when this promise will be delivered on.

The same website also gives fares: return tickets cost double the single fare. If you are going to be in the Bodensee area for some time and plan to take a number of ferry rides, it's worth enquiring about passes - when we visited in 2005, we bought a week pass, which saved us quite a lot.

many trains coming from the west and tou can reach very easily Lindau , in Bavaria , then Austria

Baden-Württemberg ticket by train : 20 euros for the whole day in the whole region

Bodo-regio ticket : 15 euros to travel by train around the Constance lake (germany, austria, switzerland ) this includes the boat from Friedrichshafen to Romanshorn, (switzerland)

there are 4 zones ine the Bodo-regio , you can pay more and travel on a bigger surface

The main railway station in the centre of town. Rebuilt after WW2, there is a waiting hall, bar and cafe with shop. Ticket machines and timetables are in the main hall. Press for english instruction, enter number of your destination ( see list next to machine, the airport is Friedrichshafen Flughafen?. I just look for the picture of an aeroplane ) then feed it euro's.
There is a taxi rank outside of the station.
TOURIST INFO Office is on the square right of the picture.
POST OFFICE is on the square left of the picture.

A little airport with a few nice surprises.
Located just outside the town of Friedrichshafen there is a hourly train service to and from the airport. The train takes no more than ten minutes ! Tickets are from a machine on the platform E1.20
Inside there is a cafe bar at check in, and upstairs ( via a glass lift in arrivals hall ) is a very stylish proper restaurant, which overlooks the airfield. Day time is self service. At night it is silver service with live Jazz or even all night disco !
There is also a nice garden roof terrace !
From the restaurant or terrace you can watch the Zeppelin land and take off as well as the aeroplanes.
Oh, and there is a helpful tourist info desk and a glass case with model Zeps and WW2 planes .