Traveling in Trains in Central Europe?

Go to www.seat61.com and all of your rail questions will be answered. No need for Rick's guidebooks.

Thanks, George. I will check it out.

You can take a train from Prague to Munich if you want. There are some lower cost ways of doing this rather than buying a ticket from Deutsche Bahn. The Man from the Boondocks of Central Bavaria knows the trick. Lets hope he sees this and chimes in.

Buses used to be both more frequent and faster than trains on the Prague-Munich route, but more train departures have been added in the past year.

Munich to Salzburg to Vienna ? You could buy Bayern ticket to Salzburg, then Westbahn ticket to Vienna -- both can be day-of purchases for low price.

For a Prague to Munich direct train, if you buy from Deutsche Bahn, cost for 4 adults is 156 EUR (~$175 US) nonrefundable. But if you buy it from the Czech railway company, Ceske Drahy, it is 1868 CZK (~$85 US) nonrefundable.
https://www.cd.cz/en/default.htm

The advice given on this website for train travel is not to be trusted as this website will inevitably steer you towards Rail Europe - a travel agency with inflated prices, bad schedules and a misguided attempt to sell Rail Passes. Do not be so gullible. Also do not trust the train fare map on this site - it only shows the most expensive fares purchased on the day of travel (no one does that!). As suggested above follow the advice of the Man in Seat 61 (he doesn’t sell anything) and use the websites of each national carrier to purchase your tickets in advance.

You can take a train from Prague to Munich if you want. There are some lower cost ways of doing this rather than buying a ticket from Deutsche Bahn. The Man from the Boondocks of Central Bavaria knows the trick.

There is absolutly no trick involved here, just follow some simple rules:

1. Never buy a ticket for the direct trains from Munich to Prague or vv from the website of the DB - the trains are run by an competitor (a joint venture of Czech Rail and the Bavarian Train Authority) and DB will sell you the most expensive ticket possible.
2. start with the E-Shop of Czech Rail and look for cheap non-refundable tickets. Prices start from approx €15 pp; tickets do not sell out quickly.
3. If sold out you can save money by using a so called "Bayern-Böhmen-Ticket" (€28/1, €35.60/2) at www.bahn.com, which covers you from Plzen to Munich. It's available at the Student's agency office (aka Leo Express) in the Prague main station too. Buy single tickets in addition for the Prague to Plzen leg (ca. €5 pp). Alternatively, you could buy a Bayern-Ticket (vaild after 9am too), which covers you from the Bavarian border (Furth im Wald or Cheb, resp.) and single tickets for Prague to Furth im Wald or Cheb.

NB. You might find infos about a "Prag-Spezial-Ticket" on the web, but that's valid only if you depart from Munich

For bus connections look up www.busliniensuche.de, which shows alternatives to the DB buses (can be set to English).

BTW, I think anything concerning trains from Munich to Prague is covered in detail by the well known man in seat 61 (you won't find anything about buses there, since he is a train zelot, like me ...; ) )

Thank you all so much! I purchased my train tickets. Thank you, George, for suggesting seat61.com, which I used exclusively. Also thanks to Sam and sla09 for using Czech site for purchasing tickets to and from Prague. I save some money! I am grateful to others for valuable suggestions. Thank you, again. Richard

Have fun! We'll be in some of those locations in 3 weeks.