Train Reservation with Eurorail Global pass

Hi Lindsay,

I purchased my night train reservations on the Rail Europe site. Search for a ticket, and click off "I have a rail pass" and it will only charge you the reservation fee. There may be a site that charges you less money to make the reservation than Rail Europe, but I am afraid that I do not know it.

Depending on when you are travelling, an advanced reservation is a very good idea as these night trains are popular and book up quickly, especially during the summer months.

By the way, are you sure there is a night train from Bayeux to Interlaken?

In the first place, you can call it (www.bahn.de) the "Bahn website", or even the "DB website", but DB Bahn makes no sense. DB stands for Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) and the red octagon with DB inside is their symbol. It would be like seeing the red circle S followed by the word Safeway, and saying I shop at "S Safeway". End of lecture.

German Rail usually only sells online tickets for routes with one or both ends inside Germany, so you can't buy tickets w/ reservations or reservations only for something like Bayeux to Interlaken.

Rail Europe has a considerable markup on tickets and reservations. For a fee ($50, I think), Euraide (www.euraide.com) will get your reservations in Munich, at European prices, and send them over here. They also show on their website a list of all the night trains in Europe. I doubt seriously that any night train goes into Interlaken.

If you are going to only make a couple of night train reservations, do not bother with the $50 charge Lee was referring to as RailEurope does not markup by that much.

There is a night train from Amsterdam to Zurich, which you could catch in Köln. If you bought it over there, a single compartment would cost you €100 ($131 at today's exch rate plus 2% for using a credit card). That would be $181 from Euraide if all you got was that one reservation.

Rail Europe doesn't sell reservations on that night train.

Ok, maybe I don't mean a night train. I went to DB, but in Bayeux to Interlaken Ost, and then a bunch of times pulled up. I was looking at a train that left at 1831 and got to Interlaken at 0757 the next day, so I guess it wasn't neccesarily a night train, my mistake. Same problem though, can I reserve a seat on this train without buying a ticket?

I don't care if I have a couchette to sleep, if it's not a "night train", I just don't want to waste one of my days on a train. Thank you for telling me all of this info, before I get there and get in a bind!

Hey Lindsay,

I looked up that timetable you were referring to, and I could not get the exact trip because I am probably not looking on the same day as you are. Please go back to the DB search, find the train trip you were looking for, and then click the arrow icon on the very left-hand side of that trip. That will expand the information to show you all the details of that trip. I think that if you look it up, you will actually be seeing that it is a number of trains (at least three probably) that it takes to get there, which would not give you a night of sleep. There might be a night train in there somewhere, but not from the first destination to the last.

Feel free to let me know the date that you are searching for the trip (by private message if you want) and I can try to help you find a way to do it via a night train somewhere along the way.

And to answer your question, for that trip if there is no night train involved, do not bother reserving a seat unless you need to take a TGV as there should be plenty of space on each train.

For what date are you looking? I have tried several dates, but I can't find a 18:31-7:57 connection. I did find one connection close to that, but it has many trains, one of which is a night train, but only for 1½ hours, and it has an almost 5 hour stopover somewhere in France in the middle of the night.

I was looking for the date of May 9th or May 10th. You are right there were multiple stops and trains, great point that I wouldn't actually be sleeping at all. I just looked at saw the 5 hour stop in Strasbourg.

Ok, so my night travel is out, because that would be horrible to be at a train station at 1a.m. for 5 hours! Ok so, I just looked at a day trip leaving at 0930 getting in at 1957, or so, it goes on a TGV from Paris to Geneva, would I really just be able to hop the train from Bayeux to Paris, reserve Paris to Geneva and then hop on the other trains to get to Interlaken? Am I understanding this right?

Thank you for opening my eyes, and explaining a night train? There is a night train from Paris to Rome right? I could take that, and go to the Berner Oberland later, would you recommend that?

The problem with the Paris-Rome night train is that it doesn't make any stops between Dijon, France, at 9:37 PM and Piacenza, Italy, at 4:44 AM, so you can't get off very close to Interlaken. But if you went to Rome, then Interlaken, that might work. I believe there is a night train from somewhere in Italy that goes near Interlaken (Bern?, Speiz?).

There is a night train from Rome to Zürich that makes a stop in Spiez. A single compartment reservation from Rail Europe would be $180 w/ shpg; it would be $193 from Euraide, with their one time fee. You could probably call German Rail and get that reservation for about $150.

The only possible problem I see with the Paris-Geneva TGV connection is that Bayeux to Paris is by regional trains, which might not have reservable seats. You could have to stand for 2 hrs from Caen to Paris.

Also, you have less than an hour to transfer in Paris from St. Lazare Stn. to Lyon Stn.

Lindsay,

I would recommend that you consider taking the trip that starts 40 minutes earlier, but ends 1.5 hours earlier too and only involves two changes - from 08:41 to 17:57. It does involve a change of train stations in Paris, but they are easily connected via metro and you will not have any problems.

Regardless of which of these two you take, the only trip that will require a reservation if you are travelling with a rail pass will be on the TGV. You can make your reservation in advance, from Bayeux. Actually, you can make the reservation from any train station in France, and any major train station in Europe, and you can reserve well in advance. If you wait until Bayeux to make the reservation, just remember that it is a small station and the ticket booth will only be open during regular daytime hours, and will probably take a lunch break.

Regarding the option of the night train from Paris to Rome, that is something that you might want to consider, but remember that it still will be a 15-hour journey just between those two cities. Is there a way to work out your travel itinerary to maybe have less travel in one day?