Guten Mörgen!
First of all, I am Timothy, a student from Indonesia who is currently having an internship in Dresden, Germany. I am currently a student of Fachhochschule Südwestfalen Soest, but I got my internship in a company at Dresden. So now, I am going to tell my experiences with public transport while living in Dresden.
Trams
First of all, the trams. Personally, I really like the trams in Dresden, especially the trams. They are in general really reliable, and as with most of the major cities, has passenger information system, which displays how many minutes that the tram / bus will arrive to the stop. Not only that, the trams have a really catchy jingle whenever they’re about to leave the stop, which is shown on the video above. Also, many of the trams are really advertising; I especially like the Sparkasse Trams; the people in the advertisements radiate positivity!
S-Bahn
Next, I’ll talk about the S-Bahn, which, like many of the S-bahns in major cities, transports the passengers to other parts surrounding Dresden. You can go to many other towns using the S-Bahn, most notably Meißen and Bad Schandau, both are really beautiful cities. Again, with regards to S-Bahn, they’re really reliable and seldom late, although I had a case where the train was cancelled while I wanted to go to Bad Schandau, forcing me to change the plans.
Tickets
Then, I’ll talk about the tickets. You can buy the tickets directly from the machines with the DVB logo on many of the stations, inside the trams, from the bus drivers, or directly from the DVB / VVO service center. There are many types of the tickets, like one-trip tickets, day tickets, monthly tickets, etc. If we buy the tickets from the driver / inside the trams, then only tickets up to day tickets can be purchased. Students can go to the DVB / VVO office to make the customer card, which entitles them to the reduction of monthly / weekly tickets. You just need to show the Student ID. My favorite is Monthly Ticket, since I’ll be living in Dresden for 5 months (and will leave soon actually), and I think this type of ticket provides me the best value (60.50 normal price, 45.40 if having a customer card).
In conclusion
Overall, I really really like Dresden’s public transportation, especially the trams, mainly because of the reliability and the catchy signal.