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For our trip back to the Netherlands we travel through Basel and Köln. We can add a direct train to our trip, so w’ere ready to travel, our Interrail-account tells me. But we would like to make a seat reservation - which is not absolutely necessary! - for the long journey in busy times. But we can't make that reservation, nor on the Interrail-site, nor on Bahn.de. We do have a littel hope, because de German site mentions a temporarily problem. But Interrail is clear: no seats available. 

Help! What could be the problem? And what happens if we travel without a seat reservation? Can we be expelled from a train that is overbooked? 

The direct train has some problems (regularly 40 min delay) and it is extremely popular so definitely book a seat, otherwise you might not even be able to board

Use next.bahn.de (only in German) or tickets.oebb.at, it might work

Otherwise take any train to Cologne and then another ICE (should be possible to book on bahn.de)

Do not use interrail.eu by any means, it is way more expensive : 8€ + 2€ booking fee, instead of 3€ per train on tickets.oebb.at or 4.50€ per journey on bahn.de (2nd class prices)

General advice (next.bahn.de tutorial in the end) : https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105

Thanks Thibcabe! But unfortunately the two other sites don't have seat reservations either. Guess the train is full. Or we have to gamble that at arrival we can find a seat… I think we will look for another connection. 

About Cologne: we first have to travel from Basel to Frankfurt and it looks like there's the bottleneck in this connection ICE 104. 

Which date and what is your entire route ?

Would be best to travel to Cologne directly and spend an hour there because connections in Frankfurt can be missed (frequent delays)

ICE 104 on 9. june 2023, 15.13hr depart in Basel to Cologne. The extra costs on interrail.eu I allready discovered. Bahn.de works fine; we made the seat reservations for the trip to Basel there. 

Oh and thanks for the advise about the frequent delays on this route… We actually cannot have that, because in that case we could be stuck for the night in Germany… 

And our total route is Bologna-Eindhoven. 

It is really weird to me, I cannot book it either but it is impossible that it is sold out a month in advance (there are saver tickets availsble which is a proof)

Either you take that route or you leave Bologna an hour earlier at 07:36 : 13€ to Milan on tickets.oebb.at, RE to Lugano and IC to Basel (reservation-free), arrivsl at 14:00

- Basel SBB - Köln Hbf 14:27 - 19:05 through the scenic Rhine Valley 3€ on tickets.oebb.at but there are hundreds of available seats

 

"Reservierung vorübergehend nicht möglich”

It looks like nobody can book seats currently for ICE 104 on 9 June. Maybe reservations are temporarily closed because they know the timetable will change because of engineering works.

DB have timetable updates on Wednesday and Friday. Keep trying on those days.

Thanks all of you, we’ll think about it… 

 

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