German travel vocabulary: 237 words
Words for getting around when you travel — airport, transport, hotel and directions (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese). This page lists 40 of them with their German translations, then lets you practise the full set in either direction with spaced repetition.
English to German: the first 40 words
| English | German | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| airport | Flughafen | |
| hotel | Hotel | |
| ticket | Fahrkarte | |
| luggage | Gepäck | |
| passport | Reisepass | |
| train | Zug | |
| map | Karte | |
| help | Hilfe | |
| flight | Flug | |
| airplane | Flugzeug | |
| boarding pass | Bordkarte | |
| gate | Gate | Airport departure point, not a fence or entrance. |
| suitcase | Koffer | |
| backpack | Rucksack | |
| arrival | Ankunft | |
| departure | Abflug | |
| delay | Verspätung | |
| customs | Zoll | Border inspection of goods, not habits or traditions. |
| border | Grenze | |
| visa | Visum | |
| bus | Bus | |
| taxi | Taxi | |
| car | Auto | |
| subway | U-Bahn | Underground rapid transit system, not a sandwich. |
| station | Bahnhof | |
| platform | Bahnsteig | Raised area where trains stop; not a political position. |
| timetable | Fahrplan | |
| seat | Sitzplatz | |
| window | Fenster | |
| reservation | Reservierung | |
| room | Zimmer | |
| key | Schlüssel | |
| bed | Bett | |
| bathroom | Badezimmer | |
| towel | Handtuch | |
| breakfast | Frühstück | |
| elevator | Aufzug | |
| floor | Etage | Level of a building, not the ground surface. |
| reception | Rezeption | |
| map app | Karten-App |
197 more words in the full “Travel Essentials” library, each aligned across seven languages and scheduled for you by spaced repetition. Add it to your account and start drilling English to German in one click.
What to watch out for in German
- 38 of these 237 words are near-identical in English and German (16%) —
Hotel,Gate,Bus. Those are free; the value of drilling is in the rest. - Accents count. Answers are graded accent-sensitively, so you need
äöüßÄÖÜ— LinguaSwap shows a one-tap keypad for them while you type. - Capitalisation counts. German nouns are capitalised, and answers in German are graded that way —
hausis notHaus. - 66 words carry a usage note in the full library, for the cases where a direct translation would mislead you.
Practise German travel vocabulary
Words come back just before you would forget them, and every language direction is tracked separately.