We are a party of 4 traveling from Berlin to Nuremberg June 14 to catch a river cruise. DB website has Sparpreis tickets at euros 19.60 each which we will be booking. Do we need reservations or can we just choose any seat on board?
Posted by
white plains, ny, usa
4140 posts
You could do either , but in my experience , given the low cost of reservations , it would make sense to reserve when you purchase your tickets . Over the years , I have traveled numerous trains in Germany and Austria , which were pretty well filled up , and a reservation really made life easy .
Posted by
Portland, Oregon
5687 posts
Most likely a reservation-available train, so you can't just sit anywhere. You can pay a little extra for reservations if you want to sit together. But, reservations are not technically required on German trains; you can sit anywhere that isn't reserved/occupied - and each seat should show above it how far it is occupied (maybe not reserved from Berlin but perhaps a few stops later it will be). Getting four seats together like this might be a challenge. I traveled solo on my train trips in Germany and never bought reservations - didn't need them, easy enough to find a single seat open.
You can always sit in the dining car - or stand - if you can't find seats.
Posted by
Augsburg, Bavaria
2335 posts
If your train goes via Leipzig (instead of Halle) it will be pretty full, so book your seats. You can read that from the price trend - the minimal Sparpreis for June 14 went up from €19.90 to 29.90 by 1pm today - almost six months out. Hope you have secured your tickets in time. The new line Leipzig - Erfurt - Nürnberg - Munich has brought Leipzig, so to speak, into vicinity of the latter cities (no plane or bus could beat then train on the Nuremberg - Leipzig leg) and the demand for seats has risen accordingly.
Posted by
OP
Toronto
30 posts
Thank you for your replies. We waited overnite and are now paying an extra 10 euros each. In any case, we are now booked with reservations - 4 seats with table.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19099 posts
It was 15 years ago, but on the only reservable train I have ever been on that was SRO, and that was on a major holiday, all the seats were taken when I got on, but only about half were reserved. When we got to the next station, a bunch of people got up to get on and we took unreserved seats before more people got on. But for a trip of about 3 hours, I would prefer to have reserved seats.