Hi, I’m Rai, my partner and I are plannning our trip in 7 months time.
:Stockholm to Berlin to Prague to Vienna to Ljubjlana to Budapest to Kraków.
Journey starting 4th August.
ARE WE TOO EARLY TO BOOK SEAT RESERVATIONS?
The website, the app, and the individual train station website all have not allowed us to book reservations. They show us the trains and prices but won’t let’s us progress past that. We have already got our passes
If we are indeed too early as we suspect, when should we book? As we then don’t want to leave it too late.
thanks!
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YES. Well, compliments, at least you got an idea-many here are terrified that trains are fully booked so long ahead. As a very rough rule-out of history it was 2 month ahead, now in most cases a bit longer, like 3-4. But some countries are notorious late always (IT) and others also extreme careful when they suspect there may be works causing maybe a time difference of 3 or 5 mins.
All newbees here will also get a welcome of anna b frs Sverige-she will link to a long list of other ways to do those pesky RES-cheaper and easier as via app. And in general it is a good idea to make plans to avoid such very long and in high summer oversubscribed lines-do not do as meek sheep what anyone does.
The SJ Euronight from Stockholm to Germany should be bookable until the 30th of September. Make the reservation at sj.se The cost for a sleeper is 830 SEK and 385 SEK for a couchette.
Other trains in Sweden are bookable until the 28th of May. However, about 40 % of all departures are still blocked from reservations due to uncertainty about construction works. Reservations for these departures will be released as soon as SJ has gotten information about the construction works.
Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days.
Planning
The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries.
Reservations
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website. You can look at the guide in the link:
https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105
If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.
Activation of travel day
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.
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