I thought I knew how this worked but reading this forum has me a little confused. I've traveled twice with Eurail (2 and 3 country passes) with family and both times I made reservations on the DB website for seats, and gone to the DB or SCNF customer centers at the train stations to make the mandatory seat reservations on the TGV trains. I've been able to get TGV reservations day of travel for the "standard" price, which is always contradictory to what RailEurope's website tells me (the reservations for passholders are sold out or horrendously expensive). I've taken this to mean RailEurope is the devil and to just deal with the nice people at the Hauptbahnhof instead. But based on what I've read here, there are only a specific number of seats allotted for Railpass holders, which sell out early. Is this true? When I make these reservations sometimes they ask to know if I have a railpass or not, but it doesn't seem to have affected anything. Relatedly, I've seen people here pooh-pooh the idea of seat reservations when not mandatory. Maybe the Eurail literature terrified me, but I've been told that in the summer, on high speed routes, seat reservations are a good idea. Should I ignore this and save myself some money? (Particularly for train travel within Germany). I've certainly been on many full trains, but I haven't really looked to see which seats were reserved or not. Also, is there any way to get TGV reservations without tickets on the web aside from RailEurope? Thanks in advance - sometimes it seems the more I learn about the train system here, the more confusing it gets!
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19274 posts
Like Tom, I have only had to stand on one reservable train in Germany, an ICE from FRA to Mannheim on a major holiday, Zweite Weihnachten (Dec 26). I mostly use regional trains for short runs, but in 2008 I went from Cochem to Hanover and from Göttingen to Karlsruhe on ICEs. I got reservations because with a ticket purchase, they were only €2,50 per direction. Never needed them - there were plenty of seats.
Posted by
Danville, VT
12040 posts
I've traveled on exactly one train in Germany where I could not find an available seat, and that was a Sunday on a holiday weekend in the summer. That being said, though, I always get reservations on ICE trains, not necessarily because I'm concerned that I won't find an empty seat, but so I don't spend too much time walking the aisles looking for one. If you're living in Germany and use the rails frequently, don't bother with RailEurope or any other silly rail pass. Just buy a Bahncard. I purchased a 2nd class Bahncard 50 (gives a 50% discount on tickets) and it payed for itself after 3 trips. The only thing to note is that a Bahncards is a yearly subscription that automatically renew unless you cancel it.
Posted by
OP
Stuttgart, Germany
3050 posts
Yeah, I've been getting Railpasses for the waves and waves of visitors coming here (amazing how much friends and family want to see you when you move to Europe!) but as soon as this summer is over and they've all gone home, I'm buying myself a DB50 card for sure. Thanks for the info!