Point to Point vs Rail Pass

At the very top of the "transportation" forum it says

"Questions about trains in Europe? Ask them here, or contact our Rail Department."

Since Ricks' company sells rail passes and has a trained staff waiting to help, you might want to try asking them.

Michael, I would try railsaver.com/railsaver.asp to figure out the least expensive and most convenient way to travel.....Sometimes the savings is only US$3 which to me is well worth not standing in line. Some trains though do require reservations in addition to the cost of the railpass.

Depending upon how many train and boat rides you take in Switzerland, a Switzerland pass might be a good deal for you. However, I don't think you'll benefit from a three-country pass. Booked well in advance (up to 90 days) at sncf.com, you can get discount fares for Paris-Lausanne. Day trips for Munich-Salzburg and Munich-Rothenburg will be very cheap using a Bayern ticket. See this link: http://tinyurl.com/2dcrb7. Have you checked the timetables at www.bahn.de? If you travel overnight from Bern to Munich, I believe you'll have to change trains at least twice in the middle of the night.

Be a little cautious about asking ETBD about whether you should use a rail pass or point to point tickets. They sell rail passes, not tickets. Naturally, they will try to sell you what they sell, regardless. I know this from a friend's experience.

RailSaver, IMO, is almost worthless. They will compare rail passes to the fastest, most expensive trains, but they won't account for less expensive options, Saver fares, or promotions. I have checked their recommendations on many occasions and never found them to be right.

The only way to find out if you should REALLY get a rail pass is to do the work yourself. It requires some research. Find out the least expensive options for each day (if you are willing to take them), add them up, and compare the cost to that of rail passes, including any extra, like night train reservatons. Only then will you have the correct answer.

Before committing to a rail pass, carefully look into your desired night train link from Bern to Munich. Bahn.de only showed two night train CONNECTIONS (Bern-Zurich-Innsbruck-Munich, and Bern-Basel-Karlsruhe-Munich). In neither case do you spend as much as 4 hours on any one night train. Both connections start with a normal train before midnight, so you would use two days of a rail pass. The Innsbruck connection would require that you also have Austria on your rail pass.

If you wanted to get some sleep on the night train, you could use the CNL night train from Basel to Leipzig. That would still require using a day of your pass to get to Basel (or standard SBB fare @ €22). You would get to Leipzig at 6:42, and still have to take day trains from there to Munich, but they would be covered by the pass.

There is a viable, non-railpass-using alternative for Bern to Munich. DB has a promotion called Dauer-Spezial, and you might be able to get a fare from Basel to Munich as low as €29 pP. Considering that you can split a €27 Bayern-Ticket for the day trip to Salzburg as well as for the trip to Rothenburg, a rail pass starts to lose any economic advantage. If you are willing to spend a few more hours from Rothenburg to Bacharach, you can go to Würzburg (€10,60 pP), where you can buy a VRN Network single trip ticket to Mannheim for €7,80 pP. In Mannheim you buy a Rheinland-Pfalz all day ticket for €25. That covers unlimited travel for up to five people on regional trains throught the state of Rheinland-Pfalz, which will get you to Bacharach, all over on the middle Rhein, then back to Mainz.

The trip from Mainz to the airport is only €3,55 pP - not worth a rail
pass day.

So, for 4 days of travel from Bern to Mainz, it could cost as little as €109.