Hello! I apologize in advance but have quite a few questions about the Eurail Pass and would love to hear your views on it. In general, does it seem worth the price vs buying individual tickets? I’m wondering if the value is also in the time savings from having to buy tickets for each section of our trip or if we want to make a sudden change in plans? I’m going with my husband and teenage son to Austria, Slovenia, and Italy for 2 weeks. Is it time consuming to buy tickets at each station? Do you need to go in person to stations anyway to get reserved seats? In late May and early June do seats tend to sell out quickly? Would we find ourselves wanting to opt for (Flix) buses sometimes? Another idea: would it make sense to only buy a national pass for Italy since that’s the bulk of our trip? Is there still an option to get an old fashioned paper Eurail Pass like I got “back in the day”? Is that even advisable? If so, can you still use the Eurail Pass app on your iPhone if you have a paper pass? I’ve heard the Eurail Pass app can be tricky and sometimes not work properly. Has anyone had any troubles using the Eurail Pass app while traveling through Europe? Thank you! I appreciate how friendly & helpful this group is always to me!! 😊
Posted by
Bellingham, WA
1673 posts
The Man in Seat 61 is always the place to start when it comes to train travel. Here is what he has to say about the Eurail pass:
https://www.seat61.com/how-to-use-a-eurail-pass.htm
You can buy nearly any train ticket or book any seat reservation online in advance, so generally no need to go to the station to buy tickets. Not three months in advance, in most cases.
Posted by
Eastern Iowa, USA
9249 posts
There are tools to help make a decision as to whether a Eurail pass pays, basically, it is planning out your travel days, comparing the day cost of the pass with individual tickets.
I have used general and country Eurail passes in the past, to good effect, but that has been years ago. I think the biggest thing that has changed is the ever increasing restrictions placed on travel. The need to purchase additional reservations, a limited number of seats available for passholders in some countries, and in some countries, just the fact that short trips just do not add up the cost of a pass. You can also save a great deal by buying tickets early, but then that usually locks you in to a schedule, which can be good or bad, depending on how you want to travel.
As for buying tickets, it really does not occupy much time, if you have phone service, the various apps for each country are easy to use and you can do at any time. Sometimes, finding a manned office to buy a ticket can be time consuming, or not available in small stations, if the machines do not work for you or your credit card. But then, if you need to buy a reservation with a pass, you will spend the time anyway.
I guess I do not know enough about restrictions in Austria and Slovenia to advise you. I know when I have tried to do the analysis for Italy, a pass never worked out (but that has been years) since you have to pay an additional seat reservation fee for the fast trains, and the regional trains are cheap. If I recall, it certainly did not work out for a global pass, but a one country pass for Italy was closer.
In general, passes still work if you use one of the longer time period, consecutive days passes, plan to move around a lot, can take regional trains, and really have no set itinerary. For two weeks, three countries, you likely will have limited travel days, planned out well ahead, so buying tickets early may be best.
Posted by
Washington DC
30405 posts
I am doubtful a pass would make sense for you. (I'd say that for just about any trip, because it is usually the case.) However, to answer that question "in general" does you a disservice. The devil is in the details. With continuous passes, you pay for elapsed time, including the days when you're just sightseeing in Vienna (for example). If you opt for a pass covering just X days in Y weeks, you have no coverage for intervening days when you might decide you want to take a quick day trip out of town. And you probably wouldn't want to buy a pass to cover that trip, anyway, because a point-to-point ticket would cost less that adding a day to the pass. Just as an example, there's a very good deal on a side trip to Bratislava from Venice, and the popular Wachau Valley trip includes boat and bus as well as train segments. (The boat segment might be covered or discounted, for all I know, but I think the bus is not.)
Please tell us how your current (even if tentative) itinerary looks--where are you going and on roughly what dates.
Italian trains are general pretty inexpensive on a per-mile basis. If you can pin down the dates and times of any of your longer Italian trips well in advance, there's a potential to save a good bit of money.
Slovenia isn't particularly well connected to surrounding countries by train. You might find you need to take a bus into or out of Ljubljana, or even a shuttle.
I've used train-ticket vending machines all over Europe. I'm not sure I've seen one without an English-language option. I sort of prefer paper tickets, so I use the ticket machines more often than many folks do. If I have an opportunity to save money by purchasing a ticket early and I'm not yet in the country, I'll use the rail company's website or app. Sometimes the app works better for payment by US credit card. I do not recommend planning to buy tickets at staffed counters in Italy. Those lines seem to move at the speed of frozen molasses. It doesn't help that almost everyone in line is trying to carry out a tricky transaction (otherwise, they'd be buying their tickets online instead).
You can fiddle around with the train websites now, to get an idea how they work and which of your anticipated trips will be cheaper if you buy the tickets early. Check for traveling the next day and for traveling in (for example) late May. How much does the fare vary?
There's a second player in the Italian market, Italo, which might be useful when you're ready actually to buy tickets, but it runs only express trains, stopping in fairly major cities. For your current purposes--trying to judge whether a rail pass will be helpful--research on the Trenitalia website will probably be sufficient. This is Italo's website: https://www.italotreno.com/en
Posted by
Los Angeles
5484 posts
As noted, Man in seat 61 has much info on the pass. He also discusses it in his recent video interview on Rick's Monday night series.
Spoiler alert, it ain't what it used to be and is not usually recommended. However, there are still certain countries where a national pass or discount card makes sense - spend more than 30 seconds on the Switzerland forum and you'll see how hotly it is discussed.