Need opinions about Eurail pass

The rail pass may turn out to be far more costly than buying individual tickets. Are you far enough along in your planning to lay out your basic itinerary for us? There are some extremely good deals available within Germany, sometimes extending to cities in neighboring countries (like Salzburg), and Italian trains are rather cheap in general. If you're doing much travel at all in Switzerland--where trains, like everything else, are quite costly--you may find some sort of Swiss pass very useful; I'm primarily questioning the idea of a 4-country pass.

So: When is your trip, and what do your travel legs look like?

The class of service doesn't usually have anything to do with whether you can (or must) make a seat reservation. I believe it does affect how much you will pay for those reservations, which are not covered by the rail pass. To me, the (usual) extra cost of first-class would be way out of proportion to the value of having a power outlet and Wi-Fi. I'm not sure how many trains have Wi-Fi only in first class carriages. How many of your travel legs are going to be long enough that your devices are likely to run out of juice?

I'd have to do some research on Switzerland, Germany and Austria, but generally speaking a Rail Pass is not cost effective for Italy as trains there are relatively inexpensive. One other important point to mention is that Rail Passes do not include the compulsory seat reservations on the express trains (Freccia, Intercity) in Italy, so those would have to be purchased separately. Those without valid reservations on an Italian train where they're required will face hefty fines, which will be collected on the spot!

" Also, if we step off along the way to explore a town I am hoping that we can easily get back on the next train due to the greater possibility of there being first class seats available."

You will not be able to "step off" express trains in Italy, since the compulsory seat reservations are specific to train, date and departure time. Even with a Rail Pass, if you were to re-board another express train you'd again face fines since you didn't have a valid reservation for that train.

There are no reservations possible on Regionale trains, so you'll have to sit wherever you can find a seat. You may have to stand at times.

You may find this helpful - https://www.seat61.com/Railpass-and-Eurail-pass-guide.htm . Be sure to read the section on "Rail Pass vs Point-To-Point tickets".

This website will also be helpful - https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains

have the power/WiFi that first class provides

That is not a given. Newer trains and long distance trains are more likely to have WiFi and/or power sockets (which may be in 1st class or both 1st and 2nd), older trains or local trains are more likely not to have either.
Trains are not a uniform system, there are different railway companies, national ones and local ones, and like airlines they have different policies, buy their trains from different builders and to different designs.

I too would suggest you do a price comparison before buying a rail pass, and read the Man in Seat 61's page on the subject: https://www.seat61.com/Railpass-and-Eurail-pass-guide.htm#railpass-or-point-to-point-tickets
Points to consider:

• With a rail pass you have to purchase a reservation on top to travel in High Speed trains in France and Italy. If you buy a normal ticket it includes the reservation.
• Reservations are a good idea on German ICE and IC trains if the train is busy or you want to be sure you can sit together.
• Italian trains are cheap.
• A rail pass does not include some local train companies.
• Reservations are not needed and usually not possible in Switzerland, except for the 4 named extra tourist trains.

Thanks for the great comments! My current plan is to buy roundtrip tickets to Zurich from the US and when we land in Zurich, hop a train to Milan. We'd spend a day in Milan to see "The Last Supper" and then head back north on the train into Switzerland. I haven't determined which town we'd visit in Switzerland but I plan on it being 1-2 days. Next, take the train across the border to Füssen, Germany for 2-3 days for some castle-visiting. Next, a train ride to Salzburg for a day or two there. Our next train leg would be up to Berlin for a couple of days. Finally, we'd like to take the train to Rothenburg ob der tauber and spend 2-3 days there. I added up the individual trips and it came out more than the Eurail pass so that is why I went that direction. (Rationale: The estimator map has me spending around $1000 each for the total trip point-to-point where I can buy 2 first-class 8-day SelectPass Adult fares for about $1200 - with second-class being only $960 for two adults).

Also, knowing that we may day trip from Füssen via train I was approaching 8 travel days in these two weeks. I've planned several trips in the United Kingdom using the rail system there and we got around just fine, but this is the first time for me planning a rail trip in Europe, so I appreciate the feedback. Since we won't be spending a lot of time in Italy, I didn't allow that country's unique rail considerations to weigh too heavily in the overall decision.

I hope this clarifies how I ended up thinking as I currently do that the four country SelectPass would be the best deal.

I added up the individual trips and it came out more than the Eurail pass so that is why I went that direction. (Rationale: The estimator map has me . . . .

Aaaaargh, is that the map on the Rick Steves website: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation/trains/cost-maps
That shows the full buy-on-the day price. If you were flying, would you just go to the airport and buy a ticket at the desk on the day?
For example:

• That map shows Munich to Salzburg as USD 40 per person. If you travel after 9 am and buy a Bayern Land ticket (1 day pass for Bavaria), all 3 of you travel to Salzburg for €37. Same price applies anywhere in Bavaria, including Füssen - Salzburg.
• Munich to Berlin, the map shows USD 170. If you buy in advance on the German railways website ( https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml ), tickets start at €39.70 per person.

Each country sells their own version of a pass that works the same way, that is likely far less expensive than the Eurail pass. At least take a look at those before you decide. There are some regional passes for Germany that may also work for you. You can get some combination of these, and with advance purchase of the longer rides, come ups ahead of the expensive Eurail pass.

Did you already reserve your flights, and not considering flying into Milan - out of Zurich? Taking the train all the way to Milan for the 15 minutes you are allowed to see the Last Supper, hardly seems worth it.

When is your trip? I checked second-class fares for early June, just guessing.

I think $1000 per person is very, very high.

Zurich-Milan: as low as €29, plus cost from airport to Central Station
Milan-Lucerne (randomly selected): CHF 47 (I think, not sure) = €41
Lucerne-Fussen: as low as €30
Fussen-Salzburg: as low as €30 (there might be a cheaper group-ticket)
Salzburg-Berlin: as low as €30 (ditto)
Berlin-Rothenburg odT: as low as €30 (group ticket available??)
Rothenburg odT-Zurich: as low as €40

Those are the current advance-purchase prices, not taking advantage of any special group deals (common in Germany) or lower youth fares in Switzerland. Even so, €230 (second class) is nowhere near $1000. And your rail pass doesn't cover the cost of reservations, where required.

Tickets for The Last Supper sell out very early. If you haven't bought yours, check immediately.

Berlin is a huge city with many large/time-consuming sights. You're going to be spending quite a lot of time on the train to get there, then leaving before you've scratched the surface to take another very long train ride.

@stan I haven't had much luck on Kayak and other sites with one-way fights beating the price of round-trip, but I'll take a look at that option again. @acraven, this is where I need the help: when I am traveling from one country to another, which country's rail site do I buy tickets from? Or does it matter? When I just checked the Fussen-Salzburg trip on the reiseauskunft.bahn.de site for June 23, I did find that the prices were about 37 Euros - so that is great! I just need to familiarize myself with the different train types (offerings) and figure out which country or countries' sites to use for booking all of these trips ahead of time.

I will re-estimate the trip using the information provided by the Man in Seat 61 and your advice here. Much appreciated!

jcckharris

I haven't had much luck on Kayak and other sites with one-way fights beating the price of round-trip,

That is what I was afraid that you were looking at. NO! On whatever site you use, don't look at combining two one-way fares, look for the option that says "MULTI-CITY" . This is also known as "open jaw" tickets. You put the first flight from "your town" to "Milan Malpensa" then the second flight is "Zurich" to "your town". That will give you a fare that is pretty close to a round trip fare. Please try it, or give us the dates and your home city and we'll show you.

Why not go to another website - like loco2.com or trainline, and see what the point to point tickets would cost for your travel plans?

@stan Another great tip! I did find out how to do multi-city on Kayak.com, thanks! (haven't found better prices yet using other sites, plus Mr. Steves recommended using this one). I appreciate everybody's tips - I swear that I've spent at least 100 hrs so far researching my trip, reading all of the relevant "Best of..." books from Rick, reading through most of the articles on this site as well as watching all of the YouTube content I could find. Still, I think that the comments on this thread have been the most helpful so far on directing me on next steps. Thanks, all!

You buy your train tickets from the website of the company that runs the trains. It's not always clear to me which one that is, so if the train is going through Germany, I check the Deutsche Bahn website first since I like it best.

There are websites that sell tickets for many countries, but some do not offer tickets on all all the trains, some mark up the tickets above regular prices at least some of the time, and some charge fees that can be rather substantial. RailEurope is best avoided because it will often cost you substantially more than buying from another source. Trainline.eu is recommended by many posters as a good source if you have difficulty dealing with the individual websites. What I'm not clear on is whether it offers all the special deals that are sometimes available on the individual railroad websites.

You usually buy tickets from the website for the originating country's trains. For instance, going from Spain to France, I'd start by looking at Renfe (Spanish rail). There are, of course, exceptions.

But you don't have to guess. The Man In Seat 61, the rail guru extraordinaire referenced above, has a handy guide here: https://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-tickets.htm

Even better, he has an introduction to European rail travel. Spend some time with this first, then other things will be clearer to you: https://www.seat61.com/Europe-train-travel.htm

When you are looking at airfare don't do two one-ways. Unless you are on something like Norwegian which prices in one-ways, two one-ways will be more than a round-trip. You need to be looking at multi-city (used to be called open-jaw, may be called something different where you are looking) which is almost always just about the same price as an A>B, B>A round-trip but allows you to go A>B, then get from B to C on your own during your holiday and flies you back C>A. Much easier.

About the Last Supper... reservations are very limited, often gobbled up by tour groups, and you need to go for the exact time you reserved. Total time of the experience is half an hour, you wait in a waiting area then are ushered into an airlock for 15 minutes where you get a preview while the humidity is removed, then you are allowed for 15 minutes into the room with the restored masterpiece at one end of the room and another beautiful (I liked it a lot) lesser work on the opposite wall. You are allowed to move anywhere in the room during that 15 minutes but there are rails protecting both works, about 4 or 6 feet from the wall. At the end of the 15 minutes you are all ushered out and the experience is over.

Be sure to take enough time while you are in Milan to visit the roof of the Cathedral.