It is better and cheaper in most casees not to use eurail for reservations.

On https://www.bahn.com/en use the seat only option, no need to enter pass details at all. €4.50 per reservation.

1st class reservations are free on https://www.oebb.at/en/ by entering interrail as discount and searching for tickets not seat only.

Read this thread for detailed instructions and other sources of reservations across Europe.

I cannot tell you how helpful this was.  I got the seats booked!

Thank you!

Don’t suppose you know what to do in the instance that a seat reservation is necessary: I’m having a similar problem from Wein to Venezia and I keep getting this same error “One of the legs of your journey could not be booked”.

Surely if you book the seat reservations through a different website it requires also getting a ticket through that website, or is the ticket not required to make the seat reservations?

Often tickets do not have a seat reservation included with them (except for high-speed trains). Like in the UK. So seat reservations are available when people would like one at no or small extra cost

Regarding Eurail pass : seat reservations and app are not linked. It's always better to book seats with the company running the train (when possible) or with other websites available throughout this forum. There's usually less or no booking fee compared to Eurail

What would be your travel date and departure time so I can have a look ? tickets.oebb.at should sell you seats without booking fee

Thanks,

Myself and 5 other friends would want to leave Budapest on the 8th August 2023 at around 8AM to go to Venice (not a sleeper train as we don’t have the travel days on our passes for that). The only option showing up is to go from Budapest to Wein and then down to Venice, but it feels like there should be a more direct way to get there honestly and would be preferred.

The only train showing up that would allow us to go that way requires seat reservations (when going through the Interrail Eurail site) for the section of Wein to Venice.

Would you recommend trying to book seat reservations on external websites (not Interrail Eurail) and if so would our passes still be valid as tickets, just using their site for the reservations.

 

Vienna (Wien) is exactly along the way, it's not a problem at all to change trains there.

Yes it's better to book seats somewhere else than interrail.eu when possible (99% of the time it is).

Btw you can take the night train to Venice. As long as you board the last train before midnight it only counts as one travel day. You need to pay extra for couchettes or sleepers obviously. Use nightjet.com and add Interrail as a discount

You leave Budapest-Keleti at 17:40, have a 1h connection in Vienna and then board the night train to arrive at 08:34 the following morning. Only one pass day used

A 6-people couchette would cost 190€ (so about 30€ per person)

For all trains in the network your pass is your ticket and totally separate from any reservation. As such you can buy/acquire your reservation from any source and match it with your Global pass.