Travelling to/around Dortmund
Location
Dortmund is located in the Federal State (Bundesland) of Nord Rhein-Westfalen (North Rhine-Westphalia) in the Ruhrgebiet, the one-time steel and mining heartlands of heavy German industry. It is 150km (90 miles) from Arnhem in the Netherlands, 95km (60 miles) from Cologne, and 35km (21 miles) from Gelsenkirchen, home of local rivals Schalke 04.
Travel by plane
Dortmund has its own small international airport, Dortmund Airport (DTN), but if flying there you are equally likely to use Düsseldorf Airport (DUS), Cologne-Bonn Airport (CGN) or, if using Ryanair, possibly Weeze (NRN).
Travel by car
There are motorways running all around Dortmund. The main ones include the Autobahn A1 (from north of Hamburg to south of Cologne), the A2 (from Oberhausen to just east of Magdeburg), the A43 (Münster to Wuppertal), and the A44 (from Aachen to Kassel). The drive from, for instance, Hamburg on the A1 takes around 4 hours 20 minutes, while driving up from Cologne on the same Autobahn will take you about 1 hours 35 minutes.
All of those motorways are, of course, linked to the rest of the nationwide Autobahn network, enabling driving times from other German cities to Dortmund of, for example, approximately those shown here:
Hannover: 2 hr 40 min
Berlin: 5 hr
Frankfurt: 3 hr 15 min
Munich: 6 hr 50 min
If you're thinking of hiring a car, I'd try Avis, Budget or Europcar.
Travel by coach
FlixBus, Germany's leading long-distance coach travel company, operates coach services from just behind Dortmund main station (from where they also run a number of services by train). For travel times and fares (which can be very cheap) check out the FlixBus website.
Travel by train
The main station in the city is Dortmund Hbf (from which you can walk to the ground in 45 minutes, or get there by underground in just over 10).
For information on the facilities available at the station (e.g. luggage lockers, hire cars, etc.), see the relevant page on bahnhof.de.
For information on Deutsche Bahn ticket offers, go to my Rail page.
For more on getting to the stadium, see the Westfalenstadion page.
Travel by local public transport
The local bus, underground, light rail (S-Bahn) and tram services come under the umbrella of the regional VRR public transport network. Ticket and timetable information can be found in English on the VRR website.
Depending on the length of your planned stay in the area/Germany, it might be worth you getting a Deutschlandticket for unlimited use of local and regional public transport not only in the Dortmund area, but also throughout the country. Alternatively, you could look at the WelcomeCard Ruhr. However, the latter is fairly pricey and probably only a good deal if you're also doing a fair bit of other Ruhr district travel and sightseeing at places to which it gives you free entry.
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