Does anyone have any tips on traveling across Europe by train?

flyingscottie81

Oh thanks everybody, this is exactly the type of advice we are looking for!

We have noted that the trains in West Europe seem to be VERY expensive, so are thinking about a cheap flight to Prague or somewhere in more Eastern Europe and do as Kingston_toon says and travel around from there.

I have been unreliably informed that the train fares around Croatia, Slovenia, Czech etc should be cheaper than France, Germany etc......

Is this true? :j

Thanks to all who have offered advice so far :T

Humphreyshalfmoon

What a great idea, to whet your appitite and give you some real idea of the ease of travelling, buy a copy of the latest Thomas Cook Continental Rail Timetable, ususlly to be found amongst the travel guides in WHSmith's. Trains in Italy are excellent and much cheaper than many other countries, I went everywhere first class for about a quarter of the price in the UK. Switzerland and Germany both have relaable fast trains, but they aren't cheap anymore. If you want to do a lot of travelling you could consider a pass to allow unlimited travel but this doesn't get you seat reservations or allow you on all the best trains. If you do most of the tarvelling in Eastern Europe it may still be cheaper to buy tickets as you go along.

123oleary

yeah they are, but a rail pass could still work out cheaper. when youve figured out your route you need to compare individual journey prices compared to a pass. also if you get a pass some trains still need reservations which usually costs the equivalent of 3-5 euros. if your doing mainly eastern europe there was an overnight train from prague to budepest which takes about 8/9 hours.
budepest - zagreb is around five hours and then change at budepest for split or ljubljana. liubljana to vienna is around five hours i think. from vienna , bratislava is an hour or three/four hours by boat or munich is five hours away. if you need to get back to prague to catch a plane home you can definately get a train from bratislava (four/five hours) and im pretty sure there is a train munich - prague - check this on dbbahn.com. of these cities munich , prague and budepest are must see's, ljubljana and bratislava are good and vienna has tons of art galleries if thats your thing. you could also go from ljubljana to venice (5 hrs) and then from venice you can get a train to vienna (11 hrs ) or prague (14 hrs).

123oleary

also if you tour croatia i'm pretty sure trains only go as south as split, any further south (dubrovnik for example) and you need to get a bus or ferries.

Voyager2002

Borrow the book 'Great Train Journeys of the World'. Most of them are in Europe, with Switzerland getting more than its fair share!

Note that tickets are very affordable in Spain as well, so buy-as-you-go might make sense there.

Cheap flights are available to much of Eastern Europe: the Ryanair airport for Vienna is actually Bratislava (both are worth visiting). And the daytime train between Prague and Budapest takes more like a morning than 8-9 hours.

nv200

Might have missed it being recommended but if you are planning such a trip, you should get yourself the invaluable Thomas Cook European Time Table book

My link sends yo to the Seat61 website to give you an idea on how the book works, and you buy it via amazon from there(recommended so that Seat61 can a affiliate fee as he runs an amazing site for nothing)..though I have no relationship with seat61

omelette451

PolishBigSpender wrote: »

The fares are just horribly expensive in the West - 100EUR one way from Berlin to a Dutch station, for instance.

Last summer I got a 29 EUR fare from Berlin Hbf to Amsterdam. You just have to book in advance like you do here. In the end Deutsche Bahn spent quite a bit of that fare posting the ticket (free) to me here in England, but still. Also, a neat quirk of DB is that it will include free stopovers in its advance fares at no extra cost if you tell the booking website how long you want to stay (e.g Berlin - 48 hours in Hanover - Amsterdam for the same price as Berlin-AMS direct).

flyingscottie81

I found the Bahn website a little confusing, can anyone give some tips? How long in advance can you book?

Thanks FS

markccfc

flyingscottie81 wrote: »

I found the Bahn website a little confusing, can anyone give some tips? How long in advance can you book?

Thanks FS

Use this English language timetable for DB Bahn.

http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?

It'll give you fares as long as a German station is involved. As with the UK or anywhere else, the sooner you book the cheaper the fare.

sturll

Yes.

Help the global warming situation and fly.

Bloody freezing right now could do with some warmer weather.