Transportation Costs Prohibitive?

You can find trainfares and schedules on the national rail system site (the RS Railpasses tab can take you there under Ticket Costs), or look at Raileurope for the highest rail prices (but do not book through them, the national rail sites will have lower prices). Why not fly multi-city (open jaw) for your main flights? Check on flying from Dubrovnik back to Dallas, you'll probably be connected through somewhere cheaper than what you estimate, or check Air Berlin's schedule and fares, they are adding routes to their system and people seem to love this airline.

hi, you dont say how you come up with that 2k cost. anyway, sometimes you need to play around with the fly in/out of cities and days of the week you fly. you may also want to look at doing your round trip (r/t) flight from PDX (assuming you will fly out of there) to Berlin or Prague or? and then look at the small puddle jumper flights as separate flights or a multi-city flight. im not going to do the work for you, but thats how i try to find the best price flights. when it comes to trains, so far from my experience in the UK and France, they dont post fairs more than 3 or 4 months out. But what i do is to look at train fairs 2 and 3 (or max) time out so i can get an idea on cost. then if im going to use that train/time, i will make a note of it and buy those tickets once the time is good. i use "raileurope.com" to look at the train time schedule but i will also use regional train web sites if i dont find what im looking for and to check the times from raileurope.com also, i havent checked your flight path, but i try to fly/travel in some path, not helter skelter and i try to travel to adjacent countries to minimize my travel time and costs. sometimes i cant avoid it like my trip for next year. this is how i do it and it works for me. happy trails.

This year we are flying to Berlin for a house exchange, then flying to Croatia for a 2 week visit. I had to play around a lot with kayak.com to structure the Croatia part of our trip, because fares vary dramatically depending on which airports you choose. It worked out best for us to fly to Dubrovnik from Berlin, and depart for home from Zagreb. Zagreb seemed to have better connections and prices than did the other Croatian airports.

Thanks for the help everyone. I got the $2,000 figure by pricing one-way flights (just used a random date this fall)from Budapest to Ljubljana and Dubrovnik to both Prague and Amsterdam (all were app. 500.00 each flight, each person). From Portland, the only non-stop flight to Europe is Amsterdam and we always book that and take hoppers from there. I was just shocked the hoppers were so expensive in that part of the country! I will keep trying other ideas, such as round trip hopper flights, and using other airports as suggested. Also, for trains, will try the raileurope site. I was trying to find fares on the deutschebahn site and for some reason even using a month or two out, it wouldn't give me fares (most likely the user). Have time to keep working on this and really appreciate the help. Hate to give up on that part of Europe yet, it's an area we really want to see. :0)

Jaye, Don't price the PDX-AMS flights separately from the hoppers (no wonder you think it's prohibitive - if you do it that way, is is!). Instead, use the "multi city" feature of http://www.kayak.com. Put in PDX to Berlin for the first segment, BUD to Ljubljana for the second segment, and Dubrovnik to PDX for the third segment. And try going PDX to Budapest and then Berlin to Ljubljana to see if that's cheaper. (You'll want to go Berlin-Prague-Budapest or the reverse, as this saves backtracking). Then try it all again, omitting the middle segment (so just putting in the trans-Atlantic travel). Then, to find flights within Europe, use http://www.skyscanner.com. Check both one-way and round trip; you can just throw away the second half of a round trip ticket (don't throw away the first half, or the rest of the ticket will be canceled). Yes, this is a lot of work, but it's the only way to see if there is something cheaper that will work for you. With all that said, you may still find it more expensive than you'd like. Ljubljana and Dubrovnik are smaller airports, and with less competition, prices can be higher than to larger markets.

hi, i agree with Harold. you need to try different combinations. It can be a pain, but you wont know until you do. I like to use Amsterdam as my "hub" since im still in that area of travel. But once i go beyond it i will look for another one. If i cant, then i will compare AMsterdam vs other flights into where i went to go. One thing though is that i like the non stop flight. Some people dont mind having 2,3 o 4 layovers, but i feel the extra time takes time away from the sightseeing so i try to minimize the layovers. one comment though is that some people say that Raileurope.com has higher ticket prices. I really dont know about that but i just want to reiterate that i use it for train time schedules, transfers and travel durations for my planning. If there are prices available, then i will use that price as my basis for my transportation cost, but i will also check regional and other sites if possible. happy trails.

Hi all, I have looked into your suggestions both from this helpline and private communication and have discovered that as of today, anyway, it would cost $5000 and up for transportation costs almost anyway I do it, including planes and trains but not automobiles. :0) We will just keep eastern Europe on our bucket list and plan something a bit more affordable for next year. Lots of other places still to see that are not as expensive so it's all good. Thanks so much for the help and advice! In the meantime we will keep buying those lottery tickets and dreaming! :0) Happy Travels!!

Sometimes the relatively low cost of expenses within a country (lodging, food, local transportation) will offset the high cost of transportation, so I always look at my budget as a whole. Many countries have super-economy trainfares if you buy up to 90 or 120 days in advance, but you are locked in to a "no changes" ticket. Bahn.de will show schedules for other countries but not prices.

On my trip to Eastern Europe last year, I ended up forgoing the PDX-AMS flight and instead did PDX-JFK-Prague, then Munich-ATL-PDX on return. I had frequent flier tickets but I checked the actual price and it was within reason ($1100 in May/June). You may have to play around with a different hub than Amsterdam - Munich is one option. Trains are probably cheaper, but will take more time. RailEurope will give you routes, but use the country-specific train sites to book (bahn.com, etc.). This website has lots of tips for booking trains http://www.seat61.com/ - 90 days or so ahead of time is the best window for getting cheap tickets. I got first class tickets from Lake Bled to Munich (with an overnight stop in Salzburg) for just under $100. Also, you might have to use some different Europe airline sites that don't show up in search engines like Kayak. For example, Adria Airways (http://www.adria.si/en/home/) flies from Budapest - Ljubljana. Croatia Airlines appears to have Dubrovnik to Munich flights.

hi again, Did you try cutting out Berlin and Prague? or combos of them? happy trails.

Hey Ray and all, We have decided to change the plan to include RS tour of Berlin, Prague & Vienna, with a few extra days in Berlin, then hop over to Budapest with 4 days or so there. So, we will still get a little 'taste' of Eastern Europe without such high transportation costs involved. I will no doubt be asking for more advice as it gets closer to serious planning time. I truly appreciate all your help and advice, thank you!! :0) Happy Travels!

I just did this in researching flights for same trip hopefully in 2014. I found Air Croatia from DBV to either CDG (Paris) or LHR (Heathrow London) to offer the most direct and inexpensive one way flights to a viable hub for TA flight. For us leaving out of DFW I found the best flight to be direct to LHR on American and then British Air to Munich and connect to Salzburg by train which we will visit for 3 days before taking the train to Ljuljana.

@ Jaye, cool. thats the way to do it. If theres a road block in your travel plans, plan around it. Once you get past this trip and after you get back home and think back to all of the planning you did you will probably see that it wasnt that bad. Also, you will have all of the tools in your belt for the next time and it will be much easier. happy trails.