Kaiserslautern is still nearly four hundred kilometers from Paris, just as it always was, but the travel time is now greatly reduced since 2007, when the French railway system opened a new high-speed stretch of tracks called TGV Est Europeen running more or less straight east from Paris.
Most of the trains have only one stop between Kaiserslautern and Paris, namely in Saarbrücken, meaning that they don’t stop on French territory at all until they get to the Paris East Station.
InterCityExpress (ICE) in Kaiserslautern
As of August 2020 there are three direct trains a day from Kaiserslautern to Paris, two German ICEs and one French TGV, but this is still a somewhat reduced schedule as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. At the height of the corona lockdown there was only one direct train in each direction.
Travel time from Kaiserslautern to Paris-Est is two-and-a-half hours.
Bicycle parking at the station
Hundreds of people make use of the free roofed-over bicycle parking area at the main railroad station in Kaiserslautern. For those diehards who are not concerned about their own health, public safety or the future of the planet, there is also a parking garage for automobiles on the other side of the tracks.
My photos in this post are from 2008. I revised the text in 2020.
See more posts on Kaiserslautern, Germany.
See more posts on train travel.
Paris Est or Gare de l’Est was my first train station in France! My wife took it to go to work in Paris from Meaux. I read the railroad will be pan European with more and more connecting lines.