After purchasing Eurail passes from Rick, our family of 3 had a very positive experience using Euraide's US office to reserve seats together for three long days of train travel, with multiple connections, thru Switzerland, Italy and Germany. We roughed out our itinerary on our own, using the Deutche Bahn site, and then contacted Euraide via email. The representative from their Boston office
(1 781 828 2488) called the same day, emailed some explanatory materials for us to read first, and then made and confirmed our reservations within 48 hours. If you need the peace of mind of knowing you have seats together on a particular train on a particular day, the $50. charge for this service is a real bargain. We were surprised at how many of the trains were filled to capacity, even in mid-May.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19092 posts
Although I agree that Euraide is a good source for hard to get reservations (night trains) in Europe, and I often refer people to them, I am not so sure about just normal seat reservations. I have seen only a few trains filled to capacity in Germany. Most were regional trains, which, with few exceptions, do not accept reservations. On the one reservable express train that I did see filled to capacity, nowhere near all of the seats were reserved. Anyone could have reserved a seat just before train time.
Reserving in advance from over here just limits your flexibility. I would say wait until you are over there.
For many trains in Germany, you can also get seat reservations online from the Bahn website.
The one exception I would make is for reserving online while purchasing German Rail discount tickets (z.B., Dauer-Spezial-Tickets), because then the reservations are half price.