I've looked on Rail Europe multiple times for trains from Venice Italy to Garmisch Germany, and then multiple other destinations in Germany. I keep getting a message that says they can't give me the info at this time. I get the message every time. Can German train travel not be booked through Rail Europe? Anyone have any suggestions? I know Bahn is the German train system. Do I have to go through them. I was hoping to book all my long distance trips on one site.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19092 posts
Think of RailEurope as a travel agency or as a ticket broker. They only carry a small subset of all the available tickets and they mark them up to make a profit. If you want to book all of your long distance trips on one site, that is what you will have to put up with - limited selection and higher prices.
BTW, even booking through the Bahn, you will need to know some things. There is only one EuroCity train per day direct from Venice to Munich. All other connections require use of an Italian train from Verona to Venice, and that leg will not be bookable on the German Rail website. You will have to pick a connection leaving Venice at 13:35 in order to find a route to Garmisch-Partenkirchen bookable online with the Bahn.
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32198 posts
as,
Forget Rail Europe. As Lee mentioned, they don't sell tickets for all routes and only provide limited information. It would help to have some idea which rail trips you're trying to book?
Use the BAHN.DE website to research your journeys. That has information for many parts of Europe, and not just Germany. When you want to book (depending on which countries you're travelling to), try a website such as www.capitainetrain.com. They sell tickets at the the same prices for rail networks in Germany, France and Italy (among others). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised once you've used them.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19092 posts
You could have booked Venice to Garmisch-Partenkirchen from RailEurope as two separate legs, Venice to Verona and Verona to Ga-P, but RailEurope only shows two Verona to Ga-P connections per day.
From the Bahn, you could have booked Verona to Garmisch-Partenkirchen as one ticket on any of five EuroCity trains during the day, and bought the Venice to Verona ticket separately from Trenitalia or at the Venice station.
I can't comment on Captaine Train, since the only way to access their website, apparently, is to sign up, giving them your email address, which I am not willing to do. Maybe someday I'll get a disposable email address and look at their site.
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16893 posts
For the most complete, one-stop shopping of schedules, we do recommend starting with the DB site. If they can also book your ticket (for trains touching Germany), then it's an easy process, all in English. Rail Europe sells a greater variety of tickets for other countries, but no single web site sells or reflects everything.