Reserved seats on Bayern tickets

The Bayern-Ticket is for regional and local trains only. In general, those trains do not have reserved seats, even in 1st class.

I think that at one time ALEX allowed seat reservation for their Munich to Prague regional train, but I don't think they do any more.

Bayern tickets are for regional trains, which generally do not allow reservations.

I bought 3 Bayern tickets in 1st class for a Sunday morning in
December.

Thanks for sharing your situation. These (and other daypass tickets for regional train travel) are non-refundable in the case that your plans change. I am sorry to report that you have locked in your travel date unnecessarily. This applies to other daypass tickets for regional train travel as well.

Sadly, the DB site does not make any of this clear to buyers. In fact, the FAQ information on the page below dishonestly omits the fact that these tickets are non-refundable. The FAQs there imply that pre-purchase offers some sort of benefit, when in fact the tickets still would have been available on that Sunday in December!

https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/regional/day-ticket-germany

The official rules for this type of ticket are hidden in the fine print in German at the page below:
https://deutschlandtarifverbund.de/tarifbedingungen/

"3.5 Stornierung... Die Stornierung von Tageskartenangeboten ist grundsätzlich ausgeschlossen."

First class is often empty on a regional train, so you’ll probably have no trouble with your bags.

We did the Bayern tickets (second class) on a three day trip in July prior to a Danube River Cruise and the regional trains were very crowded. Most of the time we had no seats. The Bayern ticket was very affordable, but we had two trains cancelled on us and we were almost late meeting out cruise group.

I think it's because flying is the only way most Americans experience public transportation that we seem to have an obsession with having reservations. With flying, there might only be maybe four flights a day by a particular airline, with each plane holding a few hundred passengers, and you can't stand on a plane. In Germany, for instance, there is often a train every hour with often as many or more seats in each coach as there are on a plane. And if all seats are taken, you can stand until one comes available.

Traveling by train in Europe, particularly by regional train, is more like taking a bus downtown.

I have seen Regional trains completely packed, with everyone standing for the whole journey. It is a fallacy to think that today, most trains have many empty seats, they don't. If it has been years since you have been to Germany, the situation has completely changed.

Because I have a senior ticket that allows me to be in 1st Class, I have been grateful to always have a seat. For those with luggage, that is probably a good idea, though I did not know the Bayern Ticket offered a 1st class option. I know the Hessen ticket does not.

...it's because flying is the only way most Americans experience
public transportation that we seem to have an obsession with having
reservations.

Bingo. But we should keep AMTRAK riders in mind as well. AMTRAK is largely reservations-only, even for pass-holders.

"Train" implies long-distance travel for most Americans . "Bus" implies a 15-minute ride to work. So it is perplexing for Americans that Germany looks at some trains as local transportation and lumps them into the same category (Nahverkehr) with buses... and perplexing as well that both trains and buses in Germany are often covered by the same ticket.

Understanding trains is also tricky because of the "glamour" factor; thanks to travel industry advertising, we wrongly assume European train travel means traveling 300 km/h all the time on high-end equipment... or some kind of Orient-Express experience. And if that's the only image in your head, you will wrongly assume that the pokey train between Steinach and Rothenburg will of course offer reservations.