Help with Eurailpass reservations for overnight train from Berlin to Vienna

Peter,

First of all, does your Eurail Global Pass include the Czech Republic? Make sure it does, otherwise the Czechs will hit you up for another ticket for going through CZ. I took the Vienna-Berlin (day) the last week in May 2010 to avoid the reservation charges but took the western route instead of the northern one through CZ because I didn't want to have to deal with them.

As an alternative you could take the other night train with a transfer stop in Goettingen, that way you avoid paying the CZ in Euro (unless you happen to have CZ krone on you). You get into Wien West a couple of hours later. That's what I would do, as far as the route is concerned. I rather just go through Germany and Austria.

As far as I can tell, our Global Pass covers Czech Republic as well. Maybe that is just recent because I saw some older information that said it was not covered. The current lists include CZ.

We are actually going to be in Prague that day. We are going to travel to Dresden just to get on that train at a reasonable hour (and maybe do a little sightseeing beforehand) rather than board in Prague after midnight.

You have already found the connection on the Bahn website. Click "Check availability" (either under Savings or Standard Fare). It will show you a table of prices for various fare types. At the bottom of the page is a link to "Book only extra charge". The extra charge is the supplement, Aufpreis, or "reservation fee", they charge for the accommodation alone if you all ready have a pass. Click the link, then select "Pass offer" and click "Continue". What you see are the passholder fares (eg €39 pP in an Economy Double), and a link to book the selected offer. It doesn't look like this train has Deluxe (1st class) compartments.

So you won't need to call the Bahn. That's fortunate. The number is (49) 1805 99 66 33, but it's no longer answered by a human, the answering message is in rapid German, and you can't use Google translate.

Thanks for that last reply. I tried just doing the Supplemental charges, picked a sleeping option, put in my credit card ect. when I submitted it I got an error. But there was a contact number for an office in the UK. I phoned in and talked (in English) to a German Railway representative. There were very helpful and I made the reservation. The charged in the equivalent in British pounds with a 2% credit car surcharge, but I had the option of having the tickets mailed (roughly $14 and may have arrived too late) or picked them up at any German railway ticket machine for free.

So that worked out great and I did not see an option of picking tickets up from ticket machines on the Website. Cost my 12 minutes of long distance phone charges to the UK, but it was worth the peace of mind.