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struggling understanding seat reservations


tmicheltracey
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First time user. Travelling from Aus to Europe in June. My first train trip will be Paris to Zurich oh June 10. I have logged onto my eurail account and clicked on seat reservations. My pass is first class. It seems to be telling me the seat reservation is over $100 😩. Is that right. 
 


 

Best answer by AnnaB

The reservation on this train is the most expensive of all reservation. You better take the TGV only to Mulhouse in France for 10 or 20 EUR. From Mulhouse you take a regional train reservation free train to Basel where you switch to another reservation free train to Zürich. 

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  • Railly clever
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  • April 18, 2023

The reservation on this train is the most expensive of all reservation. You better take the TGV only to Mulhouse in France for 10 or 20 EUR. From Mulhouse you take a regional train reservation free train to Basel where you switch to another reservation free train to Zürich. 


tmicheltracey
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Thanks AnnaB. So I was doing it correctly ? That $114 is only for the seat ? 


tmicheltracey
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That seems to be the same route as the train I selected ? 

 


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tmicheltracey wrote:

Thanks AnnaB. So I was doing it correctly ? That $114 is only for the seat ? 

The price in 1st class for this train is €68 + €2 booking fee so that's about right.

Reservations to Mulhouse, even in the same train, are only €10 or €20. Although for this particular train, SNCF doesn't want to sell any more reservations to Mulhouse. But there are plenty of other trains.

You can also search for a TGV Paris-Strasbourg, which gives even more options, and then continue by regional fast train Strasbourg-Basel (no reservations).


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  • Full steam ahead
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  • April 18, 2023

Yes but you step out of the train in Mulhouse, then take a reservation-free TER to Basel and then a Intercity to Zurich (no reservations needed within Switzerland).

That way it only costs 10€ (or 20€ if the former limited fare has sold out), even for 1st class travellers.

You can look up timetables on bahn.de or any reliable planner. There also much more options going only to Mulhouse (from Paris-Gare de Lyon) or Strasbourg (from Paris-Est) and then switching to a fast (200 km/h) regional train


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  • Railly clever
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  • April 18, 2023

It is the same route, but you only take the TGV to Mulhouse, paying 10 or 20 EUR, and take a regional French TER train from there to Basel. These reservation free trains run frequently. From Basel there are several trains every hour to Zürich. For Swiss trains reservations are never needed except for some tourist trains. 

 

A number of reservation on domestic TGVs are sold for 10 EUR and when the 10 EUR reservations are sold out, reservations are sold for 20 EUR until the train is full.


tmicheltracey
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  • April 18, 2023

Thank you everyone 


tmicheltracey
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And I’m presuming I can use my eurail pass on all of those trains ?


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tmicheltracey wrote:

And I’m presuming I can use my eurail pass on all of those trains ?

Sure you can.


tmicheltracey
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I’m sorry I thought I was asking the community. This is really very stressful. 


tmicheltracey
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So in this situation I can presume 1 st class is sold out for that time as it shows first class prices for other times ?


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  • Full steam ahead
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It is available here for 10€ : https://travel.b-europe.com/Eurail-GE/en/booking-tgv#Outbound

There's 4€ booking fee though (but you can book many TGVs in the same order)

It's a good connection as the connecting train to Basel leaves at 14:51. You can then spend time in the city if you want (it's really nice to walk along the Rhine and visit the city center) or go directly to Zurich. There's many trains per hour between Basel and Zurich. No reservations needed, simply board :)


tmicheltracey
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Thanks thibcabe. Not a bad idea. That link is blank when I click on it. Could you screen shot it? 


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  • Full steam ahead
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