Hi,
My wife and I have our itinerary all set for a 5 week trip to Europe this autumn. We arrive in Zurich on a Wednesday morning, and will be taking the train from the airport to Lauterbrunnen (en route to Murren for 4 nights) upon arrival. We will be buying a Swiss Half-fare monthly pass. We are not sure if it there is any advantage in buying these train tickets in advance, like there is when buying TGV tickets in advance to take advantage of much lower pricing. Our questions are:
1) Does it make sense to purchase the monthly half fare card before we arrive, or should we just buy it upon arrival at the Zurich airport train station?
2) It seems that you cannot purchase any Swiss train tickets more than a month in advance, so is there any advantage in buying tickets before we arrive? Mainly concerned about popularity of the route, how crowded it will be - is it difficlut to get a seat? I guess that will factor into whether or not we buy the Swiss pass in advance. We are leaning towards just buying the half-fare pass and tickets when we arrive, thinking that crowding is likely not an issue, since there are trains running about every half hour that run between Zurich and Interlaken OST (with a couple of transfers).
3) We believe that the Swiss Half-fare card only gets activated the first time you use it, but needs to be within 6 months of purchase (not a problem) - is that correct?
And in case you're wondering, we think the half-fare card makes sense for us because we'll also be taking the "Top of the World" train, as well as the Schilthorn cable car, and taking the train to Luzern (where we are staying for 3 nights), and then the train to Salzburg from Luzern.
Thanks all - we've learned a ton from reading the posts on here!