The last time I had a Eurailpass was 2019, and I wound up losing a lot of money because I was locked out of several of the long distance train routes I had planned to take. For instance, I wound up spending $150 on a last minute overnight Flixbus ticket from A Coruna to Paris because there were no seats for Pass holders anywhere, and I had to leave Bruges three hours earlier than I wanted to because there were again no more seats for Eurailpasses. I'm planning to travel by train from Calais to Riga with stops in Leuven, Strasbourg, Munich {with a side trip to Rothenberg auf der Tauber} Ljubliana, and Zagreb. Thoughts?
Posted by
Edmonds, WA 🌨 ☂
11723 posts
Thoughts?
Given your history of 'problems', I would be looking at booking individual point to point tickets.
Fool me once, shame on your; fool me twice, shame on me. A proverb that has been around since the 1600s
Posted by
Lake District, England
7324 posts
I'm a trace confused- you are heading in a logical manner heading east into the Balkans, then ending in Riga, Latvia in the Baltics- the other side of Europe- a 50 hour ride. What route are you taking from Zagreb to Riga?
I wonder if this was a spellcheck auto correct for Rijeka.
On the plus side none of these legs are compulsory reservation trains- assuming you are using day trains. Any of these trains you can board without a reservation, unlike in France and Spain.
So it is a route better suited to Eurail.
Calais to Leuven the most logical and fastest route is by Eurostar (reservation needed) but there are work round routes if no reservations were available.
Posted by
Wengen
2376 posts
There are "Pass friendly countries" there are "pass unfriendly countries" and then there is Spain where they outright hate train passengers. It is not a good idea to get an Eurail Pass when going to Spain, or France.
If your trip is mostly going to be central Europe, where reservations are rarely compulsory you can indeed travel with an Eurail Pass. However it may still not be the cheapest option. Especially once you are in the Balkans trains cheap, and you will be using busses a lot anyway.
Calais to Leuven can be don on regional trains (via Lille and either Kortrijk or Tournai), and Leuven - Strasbourg can be done via Luxembourg, again only on TER trains.
What you should do is avoid high speed trains that cross a French border. For example when going from Switzerland to France on an Interrail Pass I take a regional train to Mulhouse or Strasbourg, and a TGV from there, I do not book the expensive TGV Lyria. Cross border TGVs are overprised and complicated, because SNCF has not competition and hates train travellers.
So from Strasbourg to Munich for example take a local train across the border, and only board the ICE or TGV to Munich there.
Posted by
Lake District, England
7324 posts
Looking at fares on your route, using regional trains only and the Deutschland ticket in Germany (not valid on IC or ICE trains) Calais to Ljubliana is around 180 Euro plus another 9 Euro for each of Ljubliana to Zagreb and Zagerb to Rijeka, so 200 Euro in total.
The Deutschland ticket is a monthly ticket, but your 2 or 3 days of travel more than pays for it- many other threads on here about it.
All the way across Europe those trains require no advance booking, no quotas etc.
My personal choice from Calais to Leuven would be the little known Calais to Dunkirk train, free bus to De Panne, then train De Panne to Leuven changing at Ghent.
Leuven to Strasbourg is Leuven to Liege, Liege to Luxembourg, TER to Metz, and TER Metz to Strasbourg- all of which runs almost hourly.
Strasbourg to Munich is about 4 hours on the ICE trains (no reservations needed) or about 6 hours on a succession of regional trains, every hour.
Munich to Ljubliana at 1016 every day is three trains, none of which have quotas for reservations, none of which reservations are essential.
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
33451 posts
how could you be locked out of a train from Bruges? There are only regionals there and they don't take reservations. If the seats are all taken you stand for a while until one becomes free.
Posted by
Wengen
2376 posts
My guess is that the OP intended to connect with a TGV service in Brussels. Some TGVs are notoriously hard to get pass holder reservations for (the trains to Strasbourg for example), so you are then forced to take a longer, less convenient route, which leads to having to leave Brugge earlier...
Posted by
OP
2 posts
Thank you both so much for the very useful information and for the time you took to look over my itinerary and advise me. I will go ahead and get the Eurailpass. I did have terrible experiences using my pass in Spain, I had to go to the station in person and secure advance reservations for everything, which ate up huge amounts of time and energy, and then I was completely shut out of a way back to France. I do agree, they go out of their way to make using the system impossibly inconvenient for their rail passengers. And apparently the people in Barcelona have been assaulting their tourists!
Posted by
Northamptonshire, England
33451 posts
you can't blame the trains for that...
I just noted your first stop is Calais, and it seems your first trip will be Strasbourg?
Wondering how you will be getting to Calais as the ferries don't much like foot passengers on Dover/Calais, presuming England first?
And will you get the railpass reservations on TGVs (presumably unless you want to take a long time) to Strasbourg and then towards Germany before you travel - to avoid what happened last time?
Posted by
Wengen
2376 posts
My experience is that using a Rail Pass in France works, as long as you avoid the cross border TGVs. And yes, taking the train in Spain you quickly discover why the Spaniards themselves don't travel by train a lot... The trains are very nice, but RENFE is trying very hard to avoid running enough of them. It looks like they absolutely do not want to make money.