Hello, I will do a roundtrip with Eurail pass 1. class, mainly on Highspeed trains in Germany, France, UK, Italy and Austria. The trip will be End of July. When do you recommend to make seat reservations to be on the safe side, but also to have flexibility as long as possible? 1 month in advance? Or more?
Late july is NOT hi-season for the tipical bisnismenny that crowd 1st. In fact fairly often some railways offer 1st cl then for promotional sales to fill seats.
IN DE en AT REServ is only optional-easy to do via bahn.com (4€/ride, incl. any changes). BUT in DE normal 1st cl always gets a free seat REServ included on normal tickets-which means the seat you sit in could even be ´sold´ to someone from the next-or 2nd stop onward. UK is similar-and when done THERE RES is free @ counter.
FR and IT are more pesky: FR has quota for its superfast TGV-and prices also seem to differ and in IT can do online -but via a sneeky workaround via oebb.at = austrian railways.
Hey,
1st class usually shouldn’t be a problem but end of July is high-season. If you do it one month in advance should be fine.
Some nighttrains might be sold out (sleeper, couchette), but in general you should be fine .
In worst case you can travel in most of the countries without a reservation (in Italy you’d have as alternative Regionale trains, in France TER trains), just this will take more time and the standard of the trains might be not the best.
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