Train Travel Freak Out

Now would be a great time to get those passes! You can get seat reservations when you are in Europe. It's not high season yet so maybe you're trains are not already packed. Get all of your seat reservations in Munich.

I have been holding off because my 90 year old mother-in-law is ill and not sure I can get a refund on the passes. Do they email the passes or mail them?

They mail the passes. It's almost too late to get them. If you were planning on going from Munich to Paris on a night train, you should have booked that a long time ago.

However, you might not need a pass. If you act quickly, you can book from Munich to Paris via Stuttgart on a day train for as low as €39 per person (although for the day I checked there was only €49 tickets available arriving in Paris at 8 PM). I am not sure about Paris to Genoa, but from there to Rome, you can probably get Amica tickets the day before your travel for little more than the supplement (reservation fee) for the Italian EuroStar trains you would probably use.

Rene, in view of your imminent departure, I'd be contacting the 'Railpass' folks at Rick Steves (see above) who can probably get the passes to you in days (WA to CA) by mail (if you need them). As you probably know, can't buy the passes once you're 'across the pond'. You could lose a day or so by using email so why not call them, explain your situation, and I suspect they'll give you some advice over the phone. They don't do reservations, but after receiving their advice, you can do those in short order from CA or after you're there, depending on the route/itinerary. I might suggest that you have a rough itinerary written down before you call them and probably go through this site's Railpass planning section as well.

Go second class and expect not to need reservations. This time of year you won't have to worry.

To settle your concerns, each time you arrive at a destination check with the ticket booth to establish your departure time and whether a reservation is required.

As you get more advanced, you'll check schedules yourself and see what your departure options are. It's intimidating when you haven't done it before. Once you get there you'll find it's logical and not hard to figure out.

I suggest you do some homework. I looked up fares on the German, French, and Italian Rail websites. Assuming you book ahead for Munich to Paris, you can get fares as low as €39. I found one at €39, one at €49, another at €59. I used €59 ($94.40 @ $1.60/€) as a worst case. Looking at standard fares on the TGV websites, booked in advance and picked up at an automat in France, 2nd class, Paris to Avignon to Nice, $157. I assumed 1st class for the non-EuroStar legs in Italy at $64.60, and 2nd class on EuroStar at $113. The total came to $453. A six day, three country, Select Saver pass is $440, to which I applied Ricks estimates of "reservation" fees of $90 for a total of $530.

My analysis indicates that railpasses, if you can get them at this late date, will cost more.

Thanks everyone! I appreciate the tips. I did order the passes last night. I have 10 days of travel planned, some just day trips, other days are longer point to point days. So I think the pass is the way to go and simpler. Hopefully they will get here in time...Once in country, I will check the schedule upon arrival, ask if I need a reservation and plan my departures. OK, I am starting to settle down..ha.

Rene-

Take a few minutes one evening and go to Rick's Plan Your Trip page to Favorite Links and click on the Deutsche Bahn site under Hottest Links. Being an "overplanner", I plug in our destinations, guessing about some possible travel time of the day, and print out the train times for each of the cities that we will be using trains. File them with your travel information for each town. Then you can quickly see the possible times to travel out of the city, and when you buy your tickets/reservations in the terminal, you can literally point to the time/route you want at the ticket window.

Carla, excellent advice. Will do and thank you so much for taking the time to reply. Rene