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Hey travelers, 

 

we’re currently trying to plan our trip from Munich to Bordeaux. This is our first Internal Trip and we’re still struggling with the reservation (and the high reservation fees). 

Problem 1) A lot of trains seem to be blocked. When I click on a train connection in the app, there’s a red text telling me that there’s no booking option. Can somebody explain to me if this is a platform bug or if those connections may be available soon? 

Problem 2) The few connections which I can book are pretty expensive due to the reservation fee. Are there any tips for cheap connections from Munich to Bordeaux or is it a “normal” Interrail issue to pay so much money on top? 

 

Best greetings from Munich,

Jona 

You do not say when you are planning to travel but here are a couple of points:

If you are travelling soon you are in high season and many trains are filling rapidly, especially in countries like France who seem to have limits on reservations for pass holders.

If you are looking out a bit further then the trains may not have been confirmed for reservation yet.

The Interrail reservation tool is not always up to date so It is always worth checking alternative booking sites - there are many guides on this discussion group to alternative sites you can - I have used Oebb.at and bahn.com.

Finally you could consider using a mix of fast and regional trains, especially in France, to avoid the need for resevations. These are slower and involve a few changes but still effective. 

 

 

There are NO limits on passholder reservations IN France. It is the international TGV from/to France from other countries that have both high fees and small interrail quotas.

 

Internal French TGV have 2 passholder fees; €10 with a quota and €20 once quota is filled which is available until train is fully booked.

To search for internal French passholder fares, an alternative to interrail’s booking is b-europe from this link https://travel.b-europe.com/eurail-ge/en/booking-tgv?#TravelWish

Depending on which route you are taking it is cheaper and more available to use a regional connection to get into France and take TGV from the nearest French station, obviously avoiding the reservation essential high speed services is cheapest but depending on where in France that can mean very few options and really long journey times.

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, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.

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, 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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