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Rail Card and time tables

How does a global rail card work? When I put in schedule estimates on the Deutsche Bahn website, there are costs associated with each trip. does this mean the the rail card does not cover the trip?

Posted by
2487 posts

Especially read the section Should you buy a Eurail pass or point-to-point tickets?
Do I sense a fundamental misunderstanding of using European trains? One travels a train by having bought a ticket for that journey, the price of which is shown on the train planner. Some kind of rail pass is only used by tourists, mostly overseas.
Compare the costs of a Eurail card with those of separately bought tickets for a date 2 or 3 months from now. You'll be amazed to see how cheap trains can be.

Posted by
23178 posts

Each train system decides how to handle the rail pass with different sets of rules. The global rail pass only covers long distance trains. Nothing local within the city. And often require an extra fee for a seat reservation. Some systems limit the number of seats available for a pass and sometimes the reservation fee is as expensive as the cheapest tickets. You have to do your homework. The old days of a rail pass being a no-brainer good deal are long gone. Rail pass now provide convenience with little savings.

Posted by
11294 posts

"Rail pass now provide convenience with little savings."

And they don't always provide convenience, either. It depends on the countries you are visiting, your itinerary, and other factors.

Do read the summary from The Man In Seat 61, and make sure you understand ALL his points, before buying any pass, to avoid problems later.

Posted by
16893 posts

The Deutsche Bahn website sells tickets that touch Germany, but is otherwise also very useful to get schedules for any part of Europe. It can tell you whether or not a specific train is "Subject to compulsory reservation," or "Global price" (which means the same thing) but it does not sell most of these seat reservations (except within Germany, where they're optional) nor tell you the price. See Do I Need Seat Reservations? as well as each single-country section of our rail info for details on reservation prices and train types by country.