Riding the European rails

There is a misconception that European train travel is cheap - not so. Everyone asks if we're getting Eurail passes for our trip. Depending on where and when you want to go, the many discount airlines can be much cheaper and much faster. For a two-month backpacking trek, a Eurail pass is probably the way to go, but for shorter travel periods, especially to major European cities, it's not so clear. But we are taking three trains from Paris on because the schedule works better and that's the only way (other than driving) to get to the small northern German town (where my grandfather is from) we're going to because it's sort of on our way to Copenhagen, our departure city.

When buying train tickets, the standard advice is that it's a good idea to get reservations during busy times or if you absolutely have to be on a specific train or if you'd like a window seat, a table, or an aisle seat. Some trains require reservations, but on most they are optional. We had a bad experience on a train from London to Inverness in the middle of February because who goes to the UK in the middle of February (one of our Scottish/formerly American hosts asked us, "February? Scotland? Are you mad?") and I was laughed at by the AAA travel agent when I asked about seat reservations for a UK train in the middle of February ("Nobody goes to England in February."). What we didn't know is that it was a school holiday and we were extremely lucky to get seats for the eight-hour trip, so I'm now a big fan of seat reservations. After we'd gotten settled in our seats after a frantic few minutes racing for space and places to stow our four-months worth of luggage I heard an American voice behind us: "This is ridiculous. We wouldn't have come if we'd known they had school vacation, too."

But getting reservations (and sometimes point-to-point tickets) turns out to not be as easy as I've been lead to believe. Nowhere on any Web site I've found has it said it's impossible to make reservations from the US on many trains because they are "too local," and two of our three trains are apparently too local. We'll have to wait until we get to Europe and then go to a train station and hope we're not too late. Not only that, but neither I nor the travel agent could get tickets (let alone reservations) from Berlin to Flensburg (a standard route with multiple trains per day and the middle leg of our trip from Paris to Copenhagen) from Eurail - I had to go to a German rail Web site and order them directly. So now I have an online ticket printed entirely in German. On this one I was able to get reservations and it says Fenster on it, so, thanks to a year of college German, at least I know we got window seats. Don't remember too much about the transportation chapter, though, so I'll have to dust off my textbook so we don't end up on the Midnight Express.

I had never given Eurail much thought and so had a vague notion that it was one system and that all the trains in all of Europe said Eurail in big, bright shiny letters on the side of the gleaming cars. If I'd traveled to Europe before (Eurail doesn't do the UK, although it does cover Ireland) I would have realized that it's an umbrella organization that sells tickets for some of the dozens and dozens of different rail lines: local, regional, national, and even some private lines. One more thing to be aware of: train travel in Europe may take more than Eurail and you may not be able to buy all of your tickets or make reservations before you leave.

Comments

[Donna]

You must be thinking about something other than Eurail. On www.eurail.com, it says "Eurail Passes and Eurail tickets may not be sold to residents of Europe, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia or the Russian Federation."

Can you tell me how to get more information about getting European prices? Sounds like a great trick to know. Thanks.

[Magabe]

Eurail is pretty cheap for Europeans-- and if you can prove that you have lived/ studied non-stop for over 6months in a European country, you can get the European prices-- it's a pretty cool trick I picked up!!!

[Teresa]

Well, we took the leap and bought our 4 day France 'n Italy SaverFlexipasses (2nd class) yesterday and NO it was NOT cheap.
I kinda think we paid about $25. dollars more per pass than if we had done individual tickets but que sera; it is a done deal now. AR is going to make our seat reservations for Annecy to Paris for us; cheaper to do it from there.
This is SO exciting, I do not know how I type a coherent sentence any more!