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Vienna to Budapest or Budapes to Vienna Train Tickets or Budpaest Elsewhere

Posted by (Magyarország / Rep of Texas ) on

Most often if anyone is using a trian to reach Budapest its from Vienna and they have a choice OBB or MAV for purchasing the tickets. OBB tends to cost more than MAV for the same ticket.

Other than Austria, when you go to the MAV site to find a ticket, to Munich for instance, the MAV site may not be showing all of the options and the MAV site concentrates on trains they can disount. So for a trip to Germany do check the DB site as well as the MAV site.

Traveling within Hungary if you are over 65 is free but you still need to buy a seat reservation (a couple of dollars).

Always get a seat reservation and buy when its convenient, but dont wait too long ... maybe two week prior. You will hear that trains never fill up and that is generally true but not a fact. You will hear that there are always empty seats, generally true, but also not a fact. The tickets are cheap and if your plans do change, $25 to $50 for an unused ticket was cheap trip insurance.

I have been reading a few threads on people buying tickets from OBB and they arent enjoying it. So I thought I would post how to buy one through MAV, and it isnt hard. But it did get a bit long so i have hung the isntructions in the cloud rather than try and put it here. That link will be good for a week or so, after that PM me if you want to see it.

https://1drv.ms/b/s!Ai7Zk-szxfTJi_875iAQROB5rhVcpg?e=TqEnoq

Posted by
594 posts

Thank you for the post.
I am traveling December 15 from Budapest to Vienna and was getting concerned about fares as we got closer to the holidays. But I now realize I was messing up my search as I was comparing the price of 2 tickets on MAV to 1 on ÖBB. Oh well. Lessons learned.
I should have also been more patient as the trains/fares posted now for December 8 are less $$. So I assume they will be for they will be for the 15th too when they post (maybe next week?).

I bought tickets on OBB for 28.80 euros per ticket (for my first choice of train time). Not horrible but I do dislike wasting money.

My current issue though is do I purchase a seat assignment when they post or just wait and grab seats (2). We don’t have to sit together but I don’t want to stand. I don’t have any idea on how the christmas markets and holidays affect the loads.
Any advice on how full trains are that time of year?

Posted by
19936 posts

I bought tickets on OBB for 28.80 euros per

You did good. Nothing wrong with that.

My current issue though is do I purchase a seat assignment when they
post

Just go back to the OBB site and on the first screen (I believe) there is a choice to just buy a seat assignment. Put in the dates, etc, and find your train and choose you want to pick a seat (vs they assign one) and you will get a diagram, just like airlines do and you pick your seat.

You mean OBB is selling tickets for December but not the seats? Interesting. I would get it done sooner than later. There is a post on the forum that implies they sell the seat for the entire length of the train route. Maybe that’s true, I don’t know. But if it’s true then seats could sell out faster than not because some guy getting on at the 3rd stop and getting off at the 4th stop will lock up the seat for all 16 stops (sounds unlikely to me, but like I said, I really don’t know). On MAV that seat might cost you $4, don’t know on OBB. If you don’t have a seat assignment I suspect that 90% of the time you will find an empty seat, but unless the previous post is correct, you could find yourself getting bumped out at a few stops. Again, don’t know. So I wouldn’t risk it

This got added to my Travel Notes if anyone is interested.

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