Rail Ticket Cancellation

Avoid Rail Europe, had you bought the tickets direct from DB it would have been less problematic.

What exactly did the email from DB say?

I would always avoid 3rd party seller., esp. RailEurope. I actually had the same problem with Trainline. I had used it to purchase sncf tickets because I couldn't get the French website to accept my credit cards. Then the train was cancelled due to COVID. Trainline said to get my refund from sncf and Sncf said they couldn't refund since we purchased thru Trainline and back and forth it went. . .

You do not need to do anything. You have a ticket. That ticket is valid on other trains on the same route without you needing to do anything. Just go to the station, find your train, and get on.
Trains are mass transit. Do not assume that they operate like airlines do.

The arrangements DB expects you to take are simply looking up alternative train schedules...

After translating, it said, “your journey from Salzburg Hbf to Munich Hbf on x date is not possible as planned to due to a timetable change. Click on ‘Get current information here’ to find a different connection to your destination.”

I tried clicking on the link suggested but I got an error message.

Appreciate the advice on avoiding EuroRail next time.

Thanks, WengenK, for the information. I was assuming for sure!

Cici

The important thing to know is this: Railways cannot cancel your ticket. They can cancel trains, but cannot invalidate your ticket,
So when a train gets cancelled you are entitled, by law. to be transported on another train. You should never have to pay extra because the railways messes up.
In some countries that does require you to exchange your ticket, but not in Austria or Germany.

It has been written multiple times here, NEVER EVER buy train tickets from a ticket reseller, i.e. a 3rd party. Always use the websites of the (mostly national) railway companies.

Ticket resellers are a remnant of pre-Internet times, when booking of international train connections really required a special expertise. Nowadays they are just fleecing tourists.

I agree, one should never purchase from a third party. However, every now and then the national train sites are surely. Well, I guess, SNCF has been surly a long time in terms of taking payments from at least those who live in the U.S. I haven't needed to purchase tickets in advance for France for quite a while so maybe it is now working. I also heard people were having problems with RENFRE this summer. I always found it easy to use, but perhaps there was some glitch.

to be fair to the OP Cici, she/he has 89 posts. We here at the RS forum frequently note that buying from source is a better idea rather than from a reseller. Not everyone knows this. Wife and I figgered this out by purchasing a Ryanair tix from cheaptickets only to find later that we granted cheaptickets a $25 gift for each ticket. Hopefully you only make that mistake 1 time.

The problem really isn't RailEurope, which is OK-ish. Buying train tickets through a travel agent can have its advantages. (Try buying a ticket from Florence to Zurich on Trenitalia...)

The problem here is that Deutsche Bahn has set itself to the task of showing the world that they are better than anyone else in the world at confusing people. Hence all these weird mails people get at the slightest change of schedule. This results in people thinking they need a new ticket because the train now is schedule to halt 4 minutes in Mannheim in stead of 3...

Add to that the fact that many people have little experience with train travel and you get the issues that the OP faces.

So it maybe helps to reiterate: In the DACH/Benelux area when the train you originally selected during booking is for some reason not operating your ticket remains valid, and automatically becomes valid for all other services on the route you bought. There is no need to do something special.

In fact, for a long time tickets being flexible was the norm. A ticket from Amsterdam to Vienna allowed you to take any train on the route from Amsterdam to Vienna, and you even got two months for it. That railways have been doing yield management like airlines is a very recent thing. So now it is indeed common that you have a ticket that is for a particular train (although normal flexible tickets still exist). If that train gets cancelled however you still have a ticket, and the railways still must transport you. And DB (and others) have decided to make it easier for everyone to just let tickets default back to flexible in case of disruptions.

In Italy long distance trains have compulsory reservation. Regional trains don't, but you should not buy those tickets in advance.

So if a train gets cancelled you do need to have it exchanged. For that you go to the Frecciadesk (also often marked "servizi last minute") , which you will normally find at the head of the platform in most stations. There they can exchange your ticket for the next available train, and will do so even for tickets bought via a travel agent. The responsibility of exchanging tickets because of a disruption lies with the operator, not the original seller.

(The Frecciadesk is also where you go when you miss a train because another train was running late...)

Note that at the moment Italy runs a far better railway than Germany does...