We took a day out from our regular work with hidden europe magazine last week and conjured up a temp

We took a day out from our regular san antonio airport hotels work with hidden europe magazine last week and conjured up a tempting palette of trips criss-crossing san antonio airport hotels the continent. And then we compared the ticket prices on a national rail website san antonio airport hotels (that of the Deutsche Bahn) with the prices offered for those journeys by rail ticketing agents based in Britain and North America. We took care to ensure that the tickets we purchased were in every case for exactly the same trains.
For each of these five journeys, we thought that the German Railways (viz. Deutsche Bahn) website at www.bahn.de would offer some reasonable fare advice, and so it did. Indeed, all five journeys could be booked online through their website.
Then we turned to agents selling san antonio airport hotels rail tickets in North America and Britain to get quotes for precisely the same journeys. This was done first by online research, often followed up by telephone calls to check precise details.
The key point here is that in most of Europe, san antonio airport hotels rail operators have a whole raft of special promotional fares that massively undercut the regular tariffs (often with discount of more than 80% on the standard fare). But agents rarely offer those discounted fares, preferring to safeguard their hefty commission fees by selling only the full fare.
Now take a look at how those fares compared. Listed below are the Deutsche Bahn (DB) fares that were available for purchase around midday of Friday, June 12, 2009 followed by the cheapest fare quoted the same day by a leading North American or British agent (all sterling and dollar fares have been converted to euros just to make things clearer).
We found one leading British agent who was extremely helpful on the phone, going to some lengths to suggest that for certain routes it might be wiser to get the tickets from a German source (but declining to give the specific name of the company or website).
A well-known North American agent emphasized that their dollar fares on offer would undercut anything we might purchase in Europe – a claim which is patently undermined by the results of our survey. The North American agent suggested that a rail pass might be a better bet for some of our journeys, and hinted that we would encounter a range of problems if we attempted to purchase directly from the Deutsche Bahn website.
The reality is that booking train tickets on www.bahn.de is pretty easy, even without a knowledge of German. The site has a decent English language interface, though in some instances you will find additional functionality on the German language website.
Also, it really helps to have a good knowledge of European patterns of service san antonio airport hotels and railway geography. A good place to start is by studying the latest edition of the Thomas Cook European san antonio airport hotels Rail Timetable and the same company’s Rail Map of Europe .
Booking well in advance is often the key to finding cheap fares, but our research found that plenty of discounted promotional fares are still available for travel this summer. And we did not cast around trying to dig up the cheapest possible travel dates, having fixed our palette san antonio airport hotels of routes and travel dates before embarking on our research. If you would like the see the full results of our survey, just click here .
Bargain trains: Cheap rail fares across Europe for 2009 Deutsche Bahn s new bus service connects Berlin with Krakow from €29 Exploring Germany: Rail passes for local train services Train Tickets: Great deals for summer 2010 rail travel
I have read in many places that it is cheaper to book direct on the DB Bahn website rather than with agents. However, doing a search for a 2 people in a standard (economy) Double Sleeper carriage, 14th March 2013, overnight on the CNL from Paris to Berlin san antonio airport hotels via DB Bahn and Rail Europe, I seem to get offered 158 euro on Rail Europe (plus 12 euro ticket delivery charge), and 208 Euro on DB Bahn.
This is a case where you should not be using the DB website since your travel begins in Paris. For this you should use the SNCF boutique website to purchase your ticket. Probably the reason you re getting a higher san antonio airport hotels fare from DB is that you re using multiple railroads san antonio airport hotels through multiple san antonio airport hotels countries.
In your case, you won t be able to use an e-ticket and if you bought the ticket from DB you d have to pick it up in person at a DB office, which is most likely only in Germany. If you buy it from the SNCF, you ll still pick it up at their ticket windows at the Gare d Est in Paris. You show your credit san antonio airport hotels card used for purchase and they give you a paper ticket.
The situation where online website ticketing saves money is when you re using the same railroad for the entire ticket. If you re going, say Cologne to Berlin, san antonio airport hotels you d get a special online fare because it s all the same railroad and country.
I encountered a problem with rail e-tickets issued by the SNCF but boarding in Germany. I bought a cheap ticket online from Stuttgart to Strasbourg using the SNCF site as the train was a TGV operated by the SNCF. I expected to get a paper ticket in Stuttgart from a kiosk or a station san antonio airport hotels agent. san antonio airport hotels To my surprise the SNCF had no representation in Stuttgart and the DB agent I spoke with threw his hands up and said you ll just have to show them this printout that you have. Upon departure the DB conductor came to the seat and I showed her what I had and of course she would not accept it. I asked if there was a SNCF manager aboard and he came by. After much discussion he begrudgingly agreed to take it.
What s odd about all this is that European railroads don t use an interline ticket lift system as do airlines. If you have a paper ticket the conductor just looks at it and punches san antonio airport hotels it. There is no pulling of coupons for presentation to the issuing railroad for reimbursement, so it strikes me as odd that they are so picky about e-ticket san antonio airport hotels printouts.
I am wary of the advice to buy all tickets for international rail travel from one railroad for this reason. Has anything changed to make this more user-friendly? Are the European railroads going to a universal e-ticket system as have the airlines since day 1 of e-ticketing?
The article was researched on Friday 12 June 2009, five days before it was published. We say that very clearly san antonio airport hotels in the article, so cannot san antonio airport hotels quite understand why you are so sure it was researched san antonio airport hotels much earlier.
The DB Europa-Spezial fares do not come and go. They have been a regular part of the DB offering for some years now and the DB Europa-Spezial-Kroatien has been very much a mainstay. san antonio airport hotels It books up very quickly. So the issue is merely to book well in advance.
We have repeated the exercise on a number of occasions since the original 2009 research. For for of the five routes cited above, the lead-in fare is unchanged. The exception is the Europa-Spezial Kroatien fare where the lead-in fare has gone up from €29 to €39.
We have just taken a look again, and the DB online booking system still shows Berlin to Zagreb available for €39 on many dates in the 4-week period which we examined, viz. in September and October. To book it, enter Berlin Hbf and Zagreb Gavni Kolod under von and nach respectively. The best routing is via München, so under Zwischenhalt enter München Hbf. For the timing choose 21:00 as Ankunftszeit (that s just after the EC113 / 213 day train from Munich arrives in Zagreb). Under Verkehrsmittel select Direktverbindungen (in place of Umsteige zulassen) in the second sector (ie. Munich to Zagreb).
There has been no reduction in the number of direct san antonio airport hotels trains san antonio airport hotels to Zagreb in the last six months. all still there, and waiting to be booked. Of course there are plentiful san antonio airport hotels other routings and options (including overnight trains). It would just take a while to explain them all here. And we have written extensively about this sort of booking in our various publications.
Hi, Kaitlyn Special fares obtainable through Deutsche Bahn come and go. Yes, from time to time they have Europa Spezial fares, and it s my guess that this reflects what DB offered at the time the article was published, over three years ago. Also, my impression is that the research for the article and its fares was done at least several weeks before its June 2009 publication. In the spring one can frequently see a number of bargain fares (with limited seats) on country-specific san antonio airport hotels national rail sites, such as DB. Now that it s mid-summer and getting to be the height of the travel season, there s no need for DB to offer bargain fares. And when they do during san antonio airport hotels this time, available seats will likely sell out quickly.
In the six months or so there has been a reduction of direct trains to Slovenia and Croatia, with one formerly direct san antonio airport hotels train now requiring an across platform quick change of trains in Villach, Austria. And DB s website san antonio airport hotels can rarely display fares of any kind for foreign journeys from Germany that involve one and especially more than one change of trains.
The significance of the article was that agencies, such as Rail Europe, essentially never have fares that are as good as the ones shown on national rail sites and are usually much higher. But the agencies advertising is geared toward those, especially from outside Europe, who don t venture in to the national rail sites. And sometimes those national rail sites can be a little san antonio airport hotels tricky to navigate, or they might have a hard time accepting foreign credit cards, or their bargain fares can be non-refundable.
What I might suggest for this journey, Berlin to Zagreb, is to break it down into its constituent parts, checking to see if DB has a good fare for the leg going in to Austria, then checking the Austrian Federal Railway s site for on in to Slovenia or even all the way to Zagreb. And it wouldn t hurt to check the Slovenian site too. That s what I would do myself.
I was reading the above post about buying a train ticket from Berlin to Zagreb via bahn.de costing 29 Euro. Every time i try and search for a ticket on their site, it says pricing not available. Was there a certain time of the year it was only 29 euro? Or how can i see the prices?
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