I understand from this forum that it is not necessary to buy train tics in Switzerland beforehand. But it does sound like we can save some money by buying our train tics in Germany ahead of time.
We will be purchasing the half fare Swiss card, my understanding is that we cannot buy this online, is that correct?
What city should I purchase our fare to from Freiburg to Switzerland? Basel? Would that be our connection? If so, does anyone know which station in Basel to select that we can then buy our pass and then travel to Murren?
Also, at the end of our Switzerland plans we will be taking the train from Lucerne to Munich, ....what city would we be leaving in Switzerland so I know what train ticket to purchase in advance for the Germany section of the trip?
Hope that make sense, thanks for any help
Karen
Posted by
Green Bay
21160 posts
You can buy the 30-day Half Fare card on-line and print at home and bring it with you. You may even be able to have it downloaded to a smart phone, but I'm still a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to that.
Now, I am looking at late June, and I see you can book a Sparpreis Europa-Schweiz ticket for 2 costing 59.80 EUR. You don't get anything off of that with a Half fare card. On the DB site, you can input a Swiss half fare card for the fare calculation. where it says "bahncard" there is a drop-down menu and one of the items is "CH-Halbtax Abo (without RAILPLUS)" You get a discount on a flexpreis ticket, but the discount with the Sparpreis ticket trumps the Swiss half fare price, so that is the cheapest ticket. Sparpreis tickets are train specific, meaning you have to be on the ICE train to Basel at the time and day listed on the ticket. Once at Basel you are actually free to continue the journey on any other trains that day, keeping to the route on the ticket.
Similar going Luzern to Munich. You can either buy the ticket from SBB or DB and with both you can input that you have a Half Fare Card and that will be calculated in the price. But again, buying a Sparpreis ticket ahead will get you a better price. It all depends on if you are willing to commit to a set itinerary far in advance.
Posted by
Basel, Switzerland
8889 posts
Karen, Coming from Freiburg im Breisgau the Swiss border station is Basel SBB.
You can buy your Swiss Half Fare Card there, or on the SBB website here: https://www.sbb.ch/en/leisure-holidays/travel-in-switzerland/international-guest
Both for the same price, CHF 120 for 1 month. But as you need to change trains at Basel SBB, and buy your ½ price tickets to Mürren there, you might as well buy the Half Fare Card there at the same time.
IC trains from Freiburg stop at both Basel Badischer Bahnhof and Basel SBB.
Going to Munich, the border station is St. Margrethen. Hardly a city, more of a village.
You can see all this on the Half Price card validity map here: https://www.sbb.ch/content/dam/sbb/de/infotexte/uebersichtskarte-sts.pdf
Posted by
Seattle, WA
17438 posts
You can buy both tickets on bahn.de, which is often easier to use ( and less expensive) than the Swiss train site. Looking two months ahead, Insee the following prices:
Freiburg to Basel SBB ( main station), €19,90. You can buy your Swiss Half-fare card there and use it to continue your journey to Mürren.
Luzern to Munich is either €29,90 ( bus for the leg from Zurich to Munich) or €29,90 ( all by train, with two changes). These are special prices ( Sparangebot) and will sell out. The bahn.de website allows you to enter a Swiss Half-Fare Card to claim the reduction for the portion of the journey within Switzerland.
Scroll down under Railcards for CH-HalbTax Abo, Ohne Railplus ( or the equivalent in English).