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I booked two tickets on the direct Deutsche Bahn (ICE 93) train from Berlin to Vienna and the seat information is shown as - "Side-by-side seats Carriage 27, seats 13, 15". I would normally have expected the seat numbers to be continuous, e.g. "13, 14" or "14, 15", although I have never travelled by train in Germany so do not know the seat number system.

I booked the tickets via Trainline EU and I asked them. Their reply was:

Unfortunately, we don't have access to the seat plan of this train, so there is no way for me to confirm or deny if you are next to each other. Usually, when you're booking for multiple passengers at the same time, the system automatically tries to put them together(if possible), or the at the very least close to one another.

Could someone confirm that the seats are indeed side-by-side (and also not separated by the aisle)? Also, if anyone could show the seats on a seating plan that would be helpful.

Edit: This is the same train on a different date: enter image description here

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    seat61.com/Europe-train-seat-plans.htm Seat61 is your friend for such queries.
    – DumbCoder
    Nov 28, 2018 at 9:43
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    @DCTLib Looks as though ICE 93 is a new addition in the December timetable change. A bahn.de search for Berlin-Vienna after 9 December brings it up (depart 10:05, arrive 17:45).
    – Pont
    Nov 28, 2018 at 9:58
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    Related: How do DB seat numbers work?
    – chirlu
    Nov 28, 2018 at 10:22
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    It should be noted that DB themselves sometimes don't know (or care). I've had it on several occasions that I booked a seat only to be told: "Oh yes, we are now on ICE4, and the seats are different than from ICE3, we didn't update the booking system yet". (that being 2 months after the switch)
    – Damon
    Nov 28, 2018 at 16:36
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    93 is not the train type but the train-equivalent of a flight number.
    – shoover
    Nov 28, 2018 at 21:54

3 Answers 3

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You can check this by trying to book a reservation on bahn.de - Select "Reservation only" on the main page, then search for your train, try to make a reservation (without logging in), click on "select seat" and the layout of the coach will be shown.

For the 20th of December, an ICE train type is used for which seats 13 and 15 are next to each other and appear to be 1st class in Coach 27. Due to copyright reasons, I cannot include the seat plan shown on bahn.de here.

I am not sure if that is the case for all ICE types, but normally, seats 15 and 13 should be next to each other. The numbering scheme comes from the old days of vis-a-vis compartment seating and was just continued to be used when compartments were no longer used.

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    "Due to copyright reasons" According to which law or jurisdiction? Why do you think that DeutscheBahn would sue it's user for using a seat visualization in a discussion board?
    – FooBar
    Nov 28, 2018 at 10:39
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    @FooBar because he doesn’t have the legal rights to licence the image as CS-by-CA 3.0...? So pretty much every law or jurisdiction which prevents relicencing work you do not own!
    – Tim
    Nov 28, 2018 at 11:41
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    @Tim: You can exclude content from being licensed under CC BY-SA by saying so (and ideally using quote markup in addition). In that case, your use of the content has to be allowed by the default copyright laws (see quoting laws). -- In the case of DB train layouts for reservation, I would argue that they can’t be copyrighted to begin with (threshold of originality) -- but even if they are, quoting them in the context of this answer should be perfectly fine.
    – unor
    Nov 28, 2018 at 13:10
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    @unor the image uploaded message suggests differently: i.stack.imgur.com/j6ENh.jpg
    – Tim
    Nov 28, 2018 at 13:44
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    Fair use and quotation laws differ between countries. For example, in Sweden there is no quotation right whatsoever for images. German laws seem more relaxed on this topic but probably not as relaxed as the US Fair Use rules (assuming DCTLib is indeed situated in Germany, otherwise her jurisdiction will matter). Nov 29, 2018 at 7:44
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Using the seating plans on seat61.com, and a bit of deduction:

If it's an ICE 2 or ICE-T-7, then seats 13 and 15 in car 27 are adjacent.

(ICE 1 & 4 don't have car 27. In ICE 3 and ICE-T-5, car 27 is 2nd class only, so it can't be any of those types)

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Both seats are indeed adjacent:

enter image description here

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    This will be a very good answer if you can clarify how you found this diagram, to make it clear that it does apply to the train in the question question. Without that, all you're showing is a diagram of some train where seats 13 and 15 are adjacent.
    – Chris H
    Nov 30, 2018 at 8:44
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    The diagram contributed by Diego above can be found during reservation through the Deutsche Bahn website (available in English). Here you can see a seat map and select your seats. This happens in the stage before you confirm your reservation and pay, so can be done even when booking through another website. Nov 30, 2018 at 15:12

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