Need help with rail pass vs. individual tickets - specific itinerary

Yes, trains from Graz to Milan take 13 hours by night, 14 hours by day, or only 9 hours if you start with the 8:00 a.m. bus to Klagenfurt. How to Look Up Train Schedules and Routes Online gives you the DB train schedule link and tips for using it.

Do you have particular sightseeing in mind for Milan? If not, and if you're considering flights, also check flights to Florence or Pisa. See www.skyscanner.com. Rome to Switzerland would be another good, long leg to fly.

If your destination is one of the five towns of the Cinque Terre, just go ahead and name that. It is the same national railway system, same passes or tickets. We would not stay in the city of La Spezia unless necessary.

Is your destination the city of Bern or a mountain town like Lauterbrunnen or Muerren in the Berner Oberland? Based on some of the destinations named, I'd guess that Rick's guidebooks aren't one of your primary planning sources, but I do recommend them.

Ticket prices shown at https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/cost-maps are full-fare prices for purchase in Europe on short notice. We'll soon update these with a more current euro-dollar exchange rate, but that won't make a huge difference (about 10%). Advance-purchase can make a big difference if you book longer train trips well ahead (such as one to three months ahead), if you're ready to lock in the date and time for each trip. That could be a good option for the Munich to Graz ticket, as long as it's not on the same day that your flight arrives (in case of flight delays); this ticket is sold through the schedule link above.

Either in advance or on the spot, train tickets in Italy are relatively cheap and a rail pass would not save money for the domestic routes you mentioned. Regarding your longer and international rides, you need to decide whether you will fly and whether you want to modify the route at all.

Is there a reason that you are going in a big circle instead of flying in one place, going in a relatively straight line, and flying home from the last place, called open jaws or multi city.

Usually such an open jaw fare is about the same price as a round trip to one airport, and you save the travel time, cost and extra overnights required to return to your starting point.

Try into Munich and out of Rome.

When you pull up ticket prices in Italy, on either Italo Treno (the underdog private company) or the big dog Trenitalia (both companies run over the same rails but with different equipment) you will get up to three prices, depending on what is still available, and in 2 or more classes of travel. The cheaper prices are available until they sell out and have more restrictions.

I doubt that a railpass would help you at all in your situation and you can put the excess cash back in your back pocket (or money belt).

Have you priced out the point to point tickets for the Italy part of your trip?

Milan - Parma= 9.00 and up
Parma- La Spezia= 11.25 and up
La Spezia- Florence= 13.50 and up
Florence to Rome= 19.00 and up
Rome to Bern= 58 euros and up

These prices are for advanced purchase and are for each person. There will be no additional seat reservation charges like there will be with a rail pass. So your Italy section of the trip could cost as little as 221 euros.

If you look at the bahn.de site you can get trains from Munich to Graz for as little as 29 euros each and from Bern to Munich for as little as 49 euros each. The only segment I couldn't price was the Graz to Milan section. So far that's a total of 377 euros for booking point to point tickets for the two of you. These are second class seats, which are fine especially for shorter trips like the ones in Italy, with advanced purchase.

http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en

http://www.bahn.com/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml

Donna

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