In addition to wildwilhelm’s rather complete answer I would like to add the following option. You can travel by bus to Luxembourg and then take a bus to Saarbrücken. The price for Hahn – Luxembourg is 22 EUR if bought on the bus and between 5 and 19 EUR if booked in advance. Luxembourg – Saarbrücken is 8 EUR. This ticket can be bought on the bus. The travel time will be at the very least 3h30, but you will only have to change once.
I think that train travel in Germany is less expensive than in the UK. If you are flexible and a bit lucky, you can even make a bargain. Anyway, it is comfortable and convenient. More information can be found on the webpage of the Deutsche Bahn. On that page you will also fins information about available offers.
As an alternative, you might consider to travel by bus. Two well-known companies are Deutsche Touring and Berlinienbus.
First of all, a disclaimer: while you’re probably right that flying to Hahn is the cheapest option, it almost certainly isn’t the easiest option. If getting to and from Hahn airport sounds too awful to you, consider paying a bit more to fly to Paris (from where you can take a bullet train to Saarbrücken in under two hours) or to Frankfurt am Main (there are trains that go from Saarbrücken direct to Frankfurt airport in two and a half hours; you’ll pay around €30 one way).
I lived in Saarbrücken as a student for four years, and often traveled to Hahn for RyanAir flights. Unfortunately, Hahn is in the middle of nowhere (and “Frankfurt” is a total misnomer), and the airport is quite hard to get to. For a while there was a fairly convenient direct bus connection from the train station in Saarbrücken to Hahn airport, but this stopped running about a year ago. Now you’re left with a set of not-so-appealing options for travel between Hahn and good ol’ SB. You will have to take a bus for part of your journey.
The go-to webpage is Hahn airport’s list of bus connections. The map there is clickable, and will show you current bus schedules and prices from the various operators that serve the airport. The other page to look at is Deutsche Bahn, as mentioned by another poster here already.
Basically, there are four options that make any kind of sense. The travel times and prices I’m giving here are from the last trip to Saarbrücken I did (in early October), so your mileage may vary.
As for your other questions, I wouldn’t worry at all. While people in the Pfalz and the Saarland might speak less English than in other parts of Germany, you’ll often find somebody who can. If you have a few words of German, that’ll help a whole lot (for instance, if you’re trying to find the “Bahnhof”). Trains in Germany are brilliant: they’re usually on time, and I think they are a bit cheaper than trains in the UK. The touchscreen ticket machines in train stations can print a travel itinerary for you with times and platform numbers. Of course, don’t sit in first class if you’ve bought a second class ticket.
You can use the website of Deutsche Bahn, the german rail operator. You’re right, it’s only a little bit over 100 kilometers, but all the trains I could find are between 2.5 and 5 hours. So it will really take some time to get there.
Concerning the language, I think it shouldn’t be a problem. In Germany you’ll almost always find somebody that speaks a little bit of English, and if you understand basic German you won’t have any problem to find your way.
Your journey costs between 14 and 30 Euros (depending on the exact train) for one way.
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