Hello all,
My wife and I will be traveling to Europe in September. We'll be starting in Budapest, then to Vienna, Prague then on to Berlin before continuing to Munich. I understand train travel within Germany, I need advice on train travel from Budapest-Vienna-Prague. What is the best way to do the train travel as far as buying tickets, etc.?
Thanks for the help
Since Vienna is the middle stop of the three, I'd buy the tickets at the official Austrian rail site:
http://www.oebb.at/en/
Get one-way tickets from Vienna to Prague, and Budapest to Vienna. Be sure to use the above link, which is the official site, and not some third-party vendor who jacks up the price. Be sure to get tickets that end and begin at the hauptbanof station in Vienna, which is the main one in the city. Have fun! I like Prague the best, but all three are great in their own unique ways.
We traveled in October 2016 between Budapest to Bratislav and then to Prague. We purchased our tickets the day of travel, except in Budapest. Due to the refugee crisis, ticket purchase in Budapest was slow and we purchased our ticket the day before. We had no difficulty getting tickets in Bratislava for our next train. We used a local train and traveled second class. Easy to do, without booking in advance.
One word of advice. Many of the compartments were occupied and we would prefer a compartment to ourself. Many compartments were empty because they had reservations for legs subsequent our destination. It would appear that many people assume that if a compartment is reserved they cannot use it. We had a compartment to ourself. While some people would want to mix with other traveller, the compartments are small and people traveled as groups.
Trains are efficient if traveling point to point between cities, but can restrict your ability to be spontaneous.
Just took two of those trains, all booked and ticketed from home. Budapest to Vienna on oebb.at (couldn't get seat reservations online, so we dropped by the station in advance) and Prague to Berlin on bahn.de (we did have seat reservations, but others were not so lucky on a Sunday and were standing in the aisles.) Vienna to Prague we used CKshuttle to make a stopover in Cesky Krumlov.
http://www.seat61.com/
best advice I can give is to use this website, the guy that runs it knows his stuff and often appears on various travel forums with advice, I don't think he has made it to this one yet.
Following up, here is the direct link to The Man In Seat 61's page on where to buy tickets for each route: http://tinyurl.com/bo8x6o6
Define "Best". Cheapest? Maybe most flexible?
