There may at times be a genuine risk of not being able to get a ticket for the exact train you want if you have to wait to arrive in Greece. Having now taken these two journeys, I can refine this statement a bit more.It definitely applies for IC trains, which appear to be extremely popular and almost full to capacity (I took one around 1PM from Athens to Palaiofarsalos).ICE (Pendolino) trains on the other hand...Because they are (for the time being) barely 10 minutes faster between Thessalonike and Athens, run only twice per day, and I think cost a fair bit more, people avoid them. As things stand, I think you could book these the day before if you had to. From what I could see, there weren’t that many travellers in 2nd class either.They’re very pleasantly refurbished and the ambience is nice, but the electricals need a bit of attention; my phone charger plug spectacularly exploded about ten minutes into the journey, and though I was lent a replacement by the conductor, the flow of
Efcharisto=thanks. Nice to see someone takes this effort and thinks along. Yes, you are rail-clever. Efcharisto poli for saying so! But… Oh-btw: in such cases staff should have a direct call nr for internal help with such ´problems´-maybe even also printed on that mail? This definitely should have occurred to me! The email has indeed been signed off by an individual; she works in Prices and Statistics in the Commercial Passenger Transportation Department, and her name, phone number and email address are all displayed in the bottom margin. So yes, I’d fully agree - whoever tries this next should remember to ask the ticket desk attendant to call that number if they encounter problems. Dit the mail already tell which car/seat nr? In that case you could simply have taken that-but that OSE did not get the income for it. It does; they are the seats I requested specifically - on today’s Pendolino I had booked the only solo seat on the entire train. Of course I still want and intend to sit th
Okay thank you for this information! If we go the route where we pay the 10€, do we make a reservation for that and if so, how soon before should we try to make that reservation? Ha, funny that you should happen to ask this today! As @Angelo could tell you, the best place to book the Venice-Innsbruck train is cd.cz (the site of the Czech national railway operator), because it is the only site that bundles in a free seat reservation with the €10 (or €15 in 1st class) surcharge. The price you see will be rendered in Koruna, so 251Kc. @seewulf’s instructions for using the website can be found here, on the first and second pages:but if you get stuck, don’t hesitate to ask for more help. It almost certainly won’t be possible to book this train yet for May. All things being equal, booking a month or two ahead should be more than early enough, but you may be able to book it even earlier than that if you just want to tick it off the to-do list :-)Innsbruck to Salzburg is an optional r
I would also add, that it is possible to pay the interrail/eurail fee for the DB-ÖBB Eurocity Munich-Italy via CD. The reservation is for free on top. Same for the Railjets to Venice. That’s a masterstroke! 😮
Yes unfortunately, the whole of the Italian section these EC trains cover is surcharged in this way. You can also do either of the two routes Yorkie mentioned without paying €10 by using regional trains within Italy, but be advised that Villach is only served by surcharge-free cross-border trains twice per day, the first of which will be way too early for you. To catch the second of them, you need to Venice at 15:01 then change at Udine, arriving in Villach at 19:07. You would then have 9 minutes to change onto the IC train to Salzburg; unfortunately if you miss it, there’s a 2 hour wait before the next one arrives. The alternative, which may allow for a bit more flexibility, is to go the other way Yorkie mentioned, via Innsbruck. This allows for you to take the lesser-known low-alpine scenic route through the Valsugana (although you can go via Verona instead if you like). To do this with no reservations (but a lot of changes!), you go from Venice to Bassano del Grappa, then to Trento,
I will be travelling from Igoumenitsa to Bari later this month; my fare was reduced from €72 to €27, but having contacted Interrail I can confirm that what you do pay is indeed considered only fuel charges, port taxes, etc; and must, therefore, use up a travel day.I thought this seemed fair enough, given the €45 saved and the free airseat with my 1st class pass. It is perhaps a bit galling that it is being sold as a “free” crossing when it isn’t really, but it’s not really any different from some of the pricier international high-speed trains in that respect.
I will mention trains with affordable reservations as well as without, because your research may have previously pointed you in the direction of very overpriced international TGVs.Brugge to Paris:First, take the train to Kortrijk, then another over the French border to Lille Flandres (when you are in Kortrijk, Lille will appear on station departure boards under its Dutch name, Rijsel).Then either:Take a direct fast TGV to Paris, making no stops and taking only an hour (reservation €10, no booking fee if you buy through SNCF’s secure international hotline 00 33 1 84 94 3635). OR Take a TER (regional train) to Amiens, and then another one on to Paris. Of course this will take substantially longer.Paris to StrasbourgPay €10 to reserve a seat on one of the frequent TGVs, taking around 1h¾, OR On Saturdays: take the direct TER leaving Paris at 08:35 On Fridays and Sundays: direct TER leaves 16:35 All other days: take the 16:35 TER and change onto another one when it terminates at Sarrebourg
The main reason people stay in Taesch rather than Zermatt is that they have driven there; it is the closest you can get to Zermatt before the blanket no-cars rule applies. Unless you’ve seen a particularly good deal on accommodation, Zermatt itself would seem the more logical place to sleep if you arrive by train.*EDIT: of course though, if you can access free local train rides though your accommodation as MartinM suggests, largely disregard the above
Here’s an old IR map that I quickly scrawled the closed, unsafe or summer-only rail borders on to use for planning my own trip last month, if it helps :-)
Hi Mhaisho,Those two days would be flexible; once you activated the pass, you would have the entirety of the next 30 days in which to travel on two days of your choosing (these are known as “travel days”).Being in the middle of the Christmas and New Year period, there is likely to be high demand for train services on the 27th and 29th December, so if you have a clear idea of your plans, you probably should try to book as soon as is practical for you.Before you buy though, you may want to compare the price of this pass against standalone tickets, which you can buy directly from the French national railway operator SNCF here: https://www.sncf-connect.com/en-en/train-ticket. I say this because Eurail passes tend to increase in value-for-money with the number of days purchased (two days is less than it is even possible for us to buy in Europe), and you have to also factor-in the cost of seat reservation fees if you plan to ride any TGVs (French high-speed trains) or most intercity trains.
This information about the optional reservation for Intercitys I think is up-to-date, because when Covid was the Interrail website says reservation compulsory. Thanks for this very useful detail, I didn’t know that! If IC seat reservations changed to ‘compulsory’ and then back to ‘bookable’ again, that certainly does sound like they really are optional.As ever though, the difficulty is just how to obtain the kind of irrefutable proof that would satisfy a ticket conductor who earnestly believed they were obligatory. You’d really want some kind of printed written confirmation either from Trenitalia (good luck with that...) or Interrail, otherwise it would still be difficult to travel with complete confidence.Obviously buying a €3 seat reservation is the easy way out of this dilemma, but I suppose it might be desirable to travel on ICs without one on certain routes if you wanted to be flexible with travel times.
This is quite an old and buried discussion but I think it was actually fruitful enough for several of us to hammer out a broadly consistent policy on this topic with the approval of Interrail moderators.Of course (as in rvdborgt’s experience mentioned above) it will probably almost always be fine to travel on an IC without reservation, but as I understand it the legalistic position is something like the following:“Prenotabile” can be taken to mean “reservation required”, because apart from for Interrail passholders, it is never possible to obtain seat reservations in Italy separately to tickets (except for certain cross-border trains to Austria). However, there is a difference between trains with assigned reserved seating (le Frecce/IC), and trains with non-assigned reserved seating (some RE/RVs). Reservations for IC trains now must be made at all times of year. Obligatory reservations on RE and RV trains were only introduced during the pandemic to prevent overcrowding by controlling t
So it is, apologies!
For the normal tourist they will be of hardly any interest, for locals it will depend where you live. Yes, the areas of London Overground serves are usually quite a way out from the centre. There are areas of touristic interest in these parts of London (particularly for cuisine, food markets or nightlife), but they aren’t the big ticket sightseeing draws.You may find Thameslink and Elizabeth Line trains a bit more useful to you. They are also covered by Interrail passes, and they cross central London N-S and E-W (with the crossover point where the Eurostar comes in at St.Pancras)
*EDIT - Having looked more carefully at my confirmation email, I’m not sure about this but the ticket collection *may* actually always be at the departure station. So if you made a booking for Thessalonike to Athens, and then another one from Athens to Kalampaka, you would need to collect the first ticket in Thessalonike before boarding, and the second in Athens before boarding. I don’t know how (if at all) this would work for boarding at minor unstaffed stations, but if you were to request such a booking that issue would probably be addressed in the email correspondence.
To Make Reservations in Greece via EmailTrain reservations in Greece are obligatory but completely free to make, not only for both 1st and 2nd class, but also for IC trains, ICE (Pendolino) trains, and long-term bus substitutions like Kiato - Patras and Drama - Xanthi.While this is excellent and very refreshing compared to the seat reservation in other southern European countries, it is important not to abuse this service so that it remains available. Email bookings are probably only possible with Hellenic Train because of the simplicity of not having to conduct a formal transaction or process card details.DO NOT book unless you are very sure that you will catch the train that you are requesting, and be very careful to enter all details correctly. (Basically, don’t rush it.)(Please note that I don’t know how often others have booked using this method, or how successful it would be if attempted during peak season; but for now, this works)First, go to hellenictrain.gr/en.First, you need
only the SNCF Call Center in Douai can sell Interrail reservations, but the other one in Nancy and Poitiers not. But you can’t ask to speak with the one or the other. So, you need luck where the call center is to get a reservation. A very useful bit of information!I assume based on my three calls all getting through to somewhere Interrail reservations were possible, that Douai hosts all of the English-speaking agents? If so, it’s probably only a lottery for French-speakers.
Ok thanks for the information. I will change it from my overview. Question, is it possible to book reservations for Thalys via Thalys call center? Yes it is, but they add a €9 surcharge.(According to their website, they waive this surcharge for fares that are impossible to book online, but I’m not sure when/where this would ever apply - clearly Interrail and B-Europe passholder reservations are online enough not to qualify, even though Thalys don’t allow passholders to book on their own website.)Even so, I had been going to go ahead with this €9 fee anyway, because I thought it would probably be worth the €7 over reserving with Interrail to know at the point of booking whether or not I had made the Premium quota.That’s how the subject came up. The call-handler confirmed for me that on his booking screen he could only see Comfort class being offered for 1st class passholders, for every train on every day no matter how far ahead he looked.
Hello,It is indeed possible. But be aware that Spain is quite an Interrail-unfriendly country; there are ways to get hold of the reservations you need (), but they may not be the most straightforward or the best value. I should probably also point out that long-distance rail service on the western Mediterranean coast (anything between Pisa and Barcelona really) can be quite patchy, so I’m not sure Florence to Barcelona would be possible without a stop in between. There are quite a few very expensive cross-border trains which would be the fastest option on this kind of itinerary, so having a quick read of this guide and similar ones out there (some of them on this forum) https://showmethejourney.com/train-ticket-guides/alternative-routes-from-paris-for-eurail-and-inter-rail-users/ could potentially save you quite a bit of money, particularly if you’re willing to travel at a slightly gentler pace.
Reservations for Eurostar and Thalys trains and TGV Brussel-France Booking reservations for Eurostar and Thalys trains is possible via: French railways ticket office or by phone (press #85 for English, no booking fee, delivery via e-mail). This isn’t a question so I hope any pollution of the thread will be forgiven!I’m just posting to share my experience of calling this number, in order to advise prospective reservers that they may have a battle on their hands…I rang this number today with four reservations to make; 2 for the Eurostar, 1 for Thalys and 1 for the SNCF Nice-Paris night train. The night train was the only booking it was possible to make. On two separate occasions I tried to read the call-handler the passage from the webpage that said “Want to call Eurostar or Thalys?” …. “If booking online … isn’t convenient, you can use this international line to do whatever you need from wherever you are”, but while he was very patient and polite, he simply would not accept that inte
Forget this HalbPreisKard-its useless for the normal tourist. Strange to list it as best answer. There IS also a touristy half-fare card for 1 month-but I highly doubt if even that would help you very much. It is the latter of those two (the one month option) that I have been referencing. I initially only mentioned it as an alternative, but then later listed it at the second best answer in general, or the best for over-27s based on the calculations I did on SBB’s trip planner based on the stated specifics of this particular trip IF you can preplan and book longer time advance for the 2 trips out of/to P,then book these for IN FR only via connect.sncf-can do til Gnv and FROm Basel (=both are border points for SNCF-not a lot extra to pay. sncf-connect.com was where I got the €44 figure from (for Paris-Geneva and Basel-Paris, both direct). Over the next two months or so the €44 fare is the more commonly available of the lower rates, and with advance booking should be fairly reliably obta
Ok, I’ve done a few quick sums: Half-Fare Card 120 Fr.Paris – Geneva c.€44Geneva – Interlaken Ost via Golden Pass line 38 Fr. (I’m assuming here that the flexibility of not being tied to a particular train will be worth the 6-8Fr. extra over a Super Saver ticket to you)Interlaken Ost – Jungfrau – Interlaken Ost 105.40 Fr.Interlaken Ost – Basel c.21 Fr. (Super Saver) or 30.50 Fr. (standard flexible) & Basel – Paris c.€44TOTAL: roughly 375 Fr. (CHF and EUR are very similar in value at the moment so won’t bother converting) 4-day Global Interrail Youth Pass €185Paris – Bellegarde €10 + €2 booking fee (no booking fee at French stations but not really safe to leave until then as passholder places may run out, resulting in a €20 reservation fee which is obviously a false economy)Interlaken Ost – Jungfrau – Interlaken Ost 158.40 Fr.Frasne – Paris €10+€2TOTAL: roughly 370 Fr. 3-day Swiss Travel Pass 232 Fr.Paris – Geneva c.€44Interlaken Ost – Jungfrau – Interlaken Ost 139.60 Fr.Basel – Par
GOT IT!!! sorry .. so the train from Bellegarde to Paris is still high speed but the seat reservations cost 45 euros instead of 125 .!! Wow thanks very much Ed .. saved me some money there … Other trip would be eurostar to london a few days after paris but no savings to be had there. All my trips in the UK and Germany are no reservation needed so good there too .. Thanks !! No reservation needed, but even so, don’t forget that once you arrive here in the UK they are free to make at any station with a manned ticket counter! Anyway, glad to have been of some use and do have a good one :-)
Another alternative you might want to consider is the half fare card https://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/inspiration/international-guests/swiss-halffare-card.html, which is possibly also a bit more straightforward than some of the other options. Once you’ve paid the 120Fr. purchase price, it simply halves the cost of almost all public transport in the country, including single and return tickets for the Jungfrau region (it will almost pay for itself in one journey from Interlaken to the Jungfraujoch and back).
BelleGarde is near Marseille ? My trip is actually from Montreaux in Switzerland to Paris ? Can you give me a better route ? This Bellegarde (sur-Valserine, Ain): https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.1103/5.8291&layers=TThere are other Bellegardes, but I don’t *think* they have stations
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