Booking Eurorail and Train Reservations in Europe is a never ending nightmare

Which pass do you have?

You can book with your pass directly with the DB site:

https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query2.exe/en?protocol=https:&rt=1&

The 10:00 departure does not require a reservation at all. What time were looking to depart?

... looking to go from Interlaken to Munich on a train, the bahn.com
website doesnt allow me to select the option to utilize my previously
purchased Eurorail Select Pass.

What do you mean??? The Bahn shows train connections from Interlaken to Munich. You should be able to use any of those trains with a select pass. In most cases you just get on the train, select an open seat, and show the conductor your pass when he comes around. This is not a plane.

Your Eurail Select Pass includes Switzerland and Germany, right?

So you don't need the DB website to "allow you" passage on the train. Your pass does that. You don't have to book tickets. And you don't have to make a reservation (on most trains anyway, not unless the DB itinerary you check indicates otherwise.)

Take the 8:00 departure from Interlaken Ost for July 13, for example. I just went to the DB site, entering Interlaken Ost as my starting point and Munich as my destination. The 8:00 shows 2 changes of train. So when you're in Interlaken, you just get on the train with your pass in hand and find a seat. You get off that train in Basel and change trains for Karlsruhe. You then get off in Karlsruhe and change for Munich. The DB schedule I pulled up tells you what time those changes happen, what platforms you walk to when you change trains, etc.

I think the reason Americans have so much problem with using the trains in Europe (and why they end up spending more money than they need to renting a car) is that they don't understand how the system works. Trains are more like local buses than they are like airplanes. In most cases, particularly in Switzerland and Germany, your pass IS your ticket. You don't have to get a ticket using the pass; just use the pass. (In some primitive countries, like Italy or France, for "premium" trains, i.e., any train that goes at a measurable speed, you have to go to the counter, or online, pay a surcharge, and get a seat reservation, but for the slowest trains, you just get on.)

fiskebc1, I found booking train tickets intimidating too and I read everything I could in Rick Steve's, Seat 61, explored the various websites where you buy tickets, including DB. I finally pulled the trigger about a week and a half ago, we were waiting for a new credit card with no foreign transaction fees and chip and pin capability because I had heard that some people couldn't get their card to go through on the German and Austrian train websites. We are only going to be in Europe for 12 days including travel and needed tickets from Budapest to Vienna, Vienna to Salzburg, and Salzburg to Munich. Therefore, we did not purchase a rail pass because it would have been much more expensive than point to point tickets. I was able to book all of our tickets on the oebb.at website and they cost under $300 for two of us for the three point to point, first class, reserved seats. We got email confirmations, and PDFs of the tickets which I printed. I also have the PDFs saved on my phone and the emails enable us to access them again to print if we need to. I think the Seat 61 website was one of the most helpful to me. And maybe the advice from these other posters are hopefully things you haven't tried yet or maybe you don't need to do anything further like they said. I was nervous about planning the whole trip ourselves, we only went to a Triple A agent to get trip insurance and we did the rest ourselves. This is definitely a new experience since my two other European trips were 11-14 years ago and everything was taken care of by our hosts. So just take a deep breath! I will say that I didn't think the DB website was as user friendly as the Austrian train website.

In some primative countries, like Italy or France...

(Major chuckle, perhaps a withheld guffaw.)

Lee, I also see a lot of confusion when newcomer-travelers have used the DB site and come across the "BahnCard", which they confuse with a rail pass. (The BahnCard DOES require the purchase of a ticket.)

How "primative" to misspell primitive.
www.seat61.com should indeed help sort things out, if any website can.
One suggestion he makes is to look at www.trainline.eu which is a branch of an established British agency and often can be helpful with rail systems which seem obstinate on their own. It sells the tickets at little or no fee.
Most travellers should start by checking point-to-point tickets, which contain reservations where needed.

I hope I got through this without stumbling into my own typo. Traveller, by the way, is correct where I live.

I use a Eurail Pass in Germany and always get my reservations at a DB counter in the Reisezentrum after I arrive in Germany...easy. .

What I don't do when I want to reserve a seat (eine Platzkarte) is to book it on-line, which is totally unnecessary. There are always day seat reservations to be had in 2nd class, regardless of the route, or the train, ICE or IC, eg, Munich to Düsseldorf, Berlin to Hamburg, Frankfurt to Nürnberg, etc.

I do the same time when taking night trains, say Hamburg Hbf to Munich Hbf or Munich to Düsseldorf ... no on-line reservation booking, I just go to any Reisezentrum, wait until my number is called, then to the counter, tell the DB staff person I have a rail pass, need a seat reservation on such and such a date and dep time, ie, the night train from a to b, the DB person checks the computer, and I have my reservation...easy.

Having to make reservations with a Eurail Pass is a choice matter, you can choose to stand, if you rather not pay the 4,5 Euro, otherwise its connection to using a Pass is irrelevant. Several ICE trains I took this time were jam packed.in 2nd class.

Eurail passes are a waste of money. Return the pass and just buy point to point tickets. Use the man in seat 61 website. Why do you think you need reservations?

You can book with your pass directly with the DB site:

https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query2.exe/en?protocol=https:&rt=1&

And in the bottom line of that screen, left to the "search" button, you will find the "Seat only (no ticket)" option.

Agreed with others that you really need to spend most of your time on Seat61.com it's by far the best website to explain rail travel in Europe.

Raileurope is a terrible website and should be avoided at all costs. You have the pass, you don't need that website anymore. Stick to the website of the train system you'll be on and use Seat61.com when you get confused. In some countries, like Germany, you don't need a seat reservation with a pass, you can get one if you want it, but it's not required. If the train is originating at my point of departure, I rarely bother.

A pretty melodramatic headline . I was expecting some horror story, not that you simply needed a little help understanding how the system worked. You will find situations that are confusing or different when traveling. The strategy of asking for help was a good one.

OK, Southam. I corrected the spelling. I have a spell checker, but it redlines so many foreign geographic names and German words. My pages get so many redlined words that after a while I just ignore all of them.

As for TrainLine, I prefer not to use them. I've found errors on that site in the past. I think they might have corrected some of them, but I still don't trust them. I think they ignore Germany-wide passes, like Schönes-Wochenende and QdL tickets. I think you get more control, more options, and more information with the Bahn site.

So, you actually bought the Eurail Select Pass after the advice Chris gave you 4 days ago? Does that mean that you are traveling more than just the routes mentioned so far (Paris-Basel and Lindau-Munich) in France and Germany? Emily sounds pretty presumptuous to assume that the pass is not a good value for you, but further investigation could show that to be true.

I don't advise booking by phone for this situation, since that's the most expensive option and the seat reservations are not even required. Booking online through DB or in person in a train station is cheaper and in some ways simpler, if the optional seat assignments are really desired.

As for the RailEurope and Eurail sites, Eurail seems to work about the same as TrainLine except it doesn't give fares (but then they sell passes, so you don't need to know fares). I agree with Sarah - for the most part RailEurope is terrible. They don't show all the trains, only the most expensive ones, the ones for which they want you to buy tickets.

Like to thank everyone for thoughtful comments and help, so far :)

our plan is 4 nights in Paris, 4 nights in Interlaken and then 5 nights in Germany (Munich, Frankfurt). So we looked at point to point tickets for Paris to Interlaken, Interlaken to Munich and Munich to Paris. Our big mistake was booking within 1 month of departure so it seemed point to point for those 3 trips exceeded the Eurail pass. Next trip I'm booking point to point trips earlier! We've already purchased two country select rail pass (France / Germany) plus reservation fee from Paris to Interlaken (total ~ $650). My plan was to buy a 4 day SwissPass upon arrival in Basel to cover our Swiss travels.

Everyone's comments have been helpful. The Eurail pass was delivered to the house today and what's also been VERY helpful is the Rail Planner App - this is the first all in 1 source that is easy to understand. Looks like we can travel in Switz and Germany easy enough with the railpass without reservations. Our last step is booking high speed rail from Frankfurt back to Paris

What website did you use to price the point to points from Paris to Interlaken, Interlaken to Munich and Munich to Paris? Thanks!

fiskebc1, but what about the problem I mentioned in my other post?
Travelling Interlaken to Munich, you go through Austria, which isn't covered by any of your passes. You need a ticket for that.

You can buy the Swiss pass online at the SBB (Swiss Federal Railways) website.

Since you're traveling pretty soon, I'd work on that Frankfurt-Paris seat reservation at https://ricksteves.raileurope.com/us/rail/point_to_point/triprequest.htm. Direct Frankfurt-Paris trains depart around 8:30, 12:30, or 16:45 with $17 reservation fee.

If you choose a connecting train, then the reservation is again optional for the German leg of the trip but required for the TGV from Mannheim or Karlsruhe. You must split up the request in Rail Europe's shopping cart and the German one would require picking up at the station.

The DB web site doesn't sell a seat-only reservation for these international trains and waiting until you get there is risky, since the French trains do limit the number of rail pass travelers. They do sell e-ticketed optional reservations just to Mannheim or Karlsruhe.

Rail Europe and SBB both have e-ticketing for the consecutive-day version of the Swiss Travel Pass.

Never have needed to use a Eurail pass. When I priced out all my trips around Europe it was a waste of money for the pass. The onyl pass I bought a pass was a 2 week trip just around switzerland. The savings on the cost of the lifts we wanted to do actually made sense to get the Swiss Pass but that still wasn't the Eurail pass. Point to Point tickets i've always booked in adanvce between the big cities and the smaller cities just get them at the stations. Real simple no issues.

I have bought three separate tickets from Deutsche Bahn in the last month, at good prices and easy, .PDF printable results. The only problem has been my USA credit card company, and that wasn't a problem until the third purchase.

I bought on-line the Frankfurt Hbf to Paris Est ticket, 1st class for 49 Euro plus seat reservation thinking it would be a quieter ride, fewer people, etc. No such luck, the 1st class coach on the ICE was almost packed. No Americans on board (I didn't hear any American English), packed with French and Germans. Before leaving Frankfurt I had used Eurail Austria-German Pass where I got also the bonus travel day, ie 11 travel days instead of 10.

I made a post years ago that outlined the situations under which a Eurail pass would make sense/save money. Basically if you're travelling very long distances in countries that don't require seat reservations (France and others) that also limit the amount of reservations for Eurail pass holders.

Since living here I'd probably revise that opinion because for those long haul places, you can probably find a cheap flight. I prefer rail travel to air travel from a comfort point of view (and that may be worth paying a bit more for) but realistically, it would be a challenge to come up with an itinerary where a Eurail pass would be the best option in terms of time AND money. I could do it, but it's probably few people's travel plan.

I still think the German rail pass is a good deal if you value flexibility and you're doing long rail trips in Germany. It's saved me hundreds of dollars, easily. But that's not a Eurail pass. Yet it seems like buying a Eurail pass is a rite of passage a lot of first time travelers in Europe do, and never repeat again.

In some cases, seems like a good idea to pay the extra money to reserve seats. We hopped on a train Saturday morning at Berlin HBF - heading out of town to Dresden. Bought the flex-pass tickets from a kiosk at the station. Plopped down in an empty 2nd class carriage, where no seats were marked reserved. At first stop (berlin suburb) a tour group gets on and claims they have reserved all the seats. As it was a stressed out chaperone with a bunch of kids, we didn't argue, other than pointing out that nothing indicated seats were reserved. At this point train aisles are completely jammed, and it's impossible to move. We push through to the next carriage and same situation. So we end up standing for the one hour trip to dresden, though many people in same situation were probably going to stand or sit on the floor -all the way to prague. As my younger son told me when we got off the train, "dad, next time book us some seats!"

True it happens...you stand, or you could have argued, such as, ­" Show the reservation to me that says you reserved this seat." Those Germans speak enough English... their Schulenglisch. Put them to the test. Standing the whole time, one or two hours on an ICE I have done, even on this last trip.

On longer train trips -- especially when carrying luggage or on a weekend/holiday -- we reserve seats. And if there's someone in our seats, I give them a look and announce "I believe those are our seats" while holding out the reservations. Day trips, we take our chances. All point-to-point.

We were in Germany a month ago. We love the trains. We used them a lot. The DB Reiseburo (trip office) is filled with helpful people. Ask politely if they speak English (usual response: "Of course") Then ask for help. We were going from Munchen to Zagreb. The helpful attendant told us about the cheaper fare, and then helped us use the machine. Easy, very easy!! Have fun!! Don't cancel your trip. And don't get frustrated.

True that the DB Reisezentrum is staffed with very helpful people. I would not be surprised at all if knowledge of English was a prerequisite to working in the Reisezentrum. From what I have seen of international tourists trying to have their problems solved at the Reisezentrum, their problems overshadow simple ticket buying and reservations.

Sorry for your problems, however, I purchased the Eurorail Pass before I left and made reservations while I was there. Not the best thing to do, but had no real problems it caused some heartburn making sure of my address for my reservations to arrive. It also helped to have the Eurorail App.

I don't see the need for spending more money for 1st class tickets unless there is a sale going on.
1st class tickets don't give you much more leg room or anything else, so it's frankly, a waste of money.

1st class tickets don't give you much more leg room or anything else, so it's frankly, a waste of money.

Have you ever travelled on an ICE?

If it is a choice on the TGV from Paris to Frankfurt between 1st class or 2nd, I take the 1st class seat. I rode Paris to Perpignan r/t (after a week) in June 2011, one way 2nd class, the other 1st class, the 1st class was much better.