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901

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Europe Disaster.. Need serious Help

« on: February 25, 2011, 01:35:32 am »

1) Regional Trains in Italy - do I need to book these in advance to ensure these rates or can we just show up and buy at the station? Also, are the regional trains at the same stations as other trains? if so will it be obvious for me to get on the right one?

No need to book anything in advance. That is a good thing about regional trains - no need to prepurchase the ticket, fares stay the same doesn't matter when you buy it. Another good thing is that ticket basically is issued for the route, but not particular train, thus even if you miss one you can always catch next since no seat reservation require on any regional train. And yes, they depart from same train stations, sometimes even making couple stops within the city boundaries, so even no need to get to central station. Just check out times when regional trains depart, so you can pick the right time to arrive at the station, on website those train marked as "R" or "Regionale Veloc"

2) I actually meant going from istanbul - vienna (not back to venice!! sorry!). I was also thinking of doing istanbul - budabest - vienna - prague. This istanbul budapest would be by air, but the whizz air website says I can only book a round trip, not a one way. Do you know anything about this. After that, what would be the budapest - vienna train route and how much? or would it be better to fly?

Well, WizzAir for sure does have limitation for return ticket only, unfortunately. Not sure why and where it comes from, but it is a known thing. But depending on date, it might actually make sense to purchase return ticket, but fly only one way. Or you can always use train all the way from Turkey to Hungary too.
No need to fly Budapest-Vienna, trains run every two hours and cost from 13 EUR per person. Such discounted tickets can be purchased either online (unfortunately interface is in Hungarian only - http://www.mav-start.hu/nemzetkozi_e_ticket/index.php , but not very difficult with google translator) or from the ticket counters already in Budapest (at least 3 days in advance purchase required). Regular fare is 25 EUR.
Vienna-Prague discounted tickets can be purchased in advance from Austrian Railways website (https://ticket.oebb.at/bin/frame_ticket.pl?ticket=jticket.pl&LANG=EN , from 29 EUR per person). Or you can do a trick with Einfach-Raus Ticket till Austrian-Czech border and domestic group ticket/pass from there till Prague.

3) the up to 5 passenger passes you mentioned - I think I am reading the websites correctly but it says we can buy directly at the station? is this the case or do we need to ge them ahead of time. the problem is i dont know exactly what day...

That is a good thing about those local passes that you can get them even 5 minutes before train departure, so there is absolutely no need to prepurchase anything. And not only you can buy them from the counter, but from ticket machines around station or internet.

902

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Europe Disaster.. Need serious Help

« on: February 24, 2011, 12:51:57 am »

One more thing - My brother and a friend may be coming with us in which case there would be 4 students total under age 25.

Well, local passes like Einfach-Raus Ticket, Bavaria-Lander ticket, Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket etc. seems to be specifically useful in your case, since all 4 of you can travel for almost nothing compared to standard passenger fare, that is why we recommend those on route where it is possible to use those.

Should be buy a Rail Card Youth?

Hmmm... not quite sure what you meant exactly? Youth railcards (like EURO26) in Europe are usually sold to youth passengers from particular countries and thus give discount for domestic travels within that country and sometimes for international tickets as well (if they include Rail Plus).

Athens - Istanbul - via Thessaloniki. Would it be worth getting the Balkan rail pass just for this trip? this website said it was 160E http://www.raileurope.ca/rail-tickets-passes/balkan-flexipass/discounts-and-pricing.html, but that is for first class. Your website said it is 51E for second class - where do I find that if this is something I should buy?

In such cases RailEurope is basically acting as a scam. They are agency which trying to sell you same thing for almost twice bigger sum (160 CAD vs. 70 EUR on spot, if we are talking about 5 day pass, 1st class), than it costs on spot. 51 EUR is exactly the fare which young person (<26 years) pays for 5 day pass, 2nd class. But if you intend to use Balkan Pass only for Athens-Thessaloniki-Istanbul route (one way) it is not worth it, since one way full fare international ticket Athens-Istanbul bought in Greece will cost app. 35 EUR (+25 EUR for sleeper reservation on overnight Thessaloniki-Istanbul train)   

p.s. in case of any further questions or clarifications feel free to ask 

903

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Europe Disaster.. Need serious Help

« on: February 24, 2011, 12:33:47 am »

Venice - Bologna - florence - Rome
What is the cheapest way to do this? Id like to spend a couple days in each place, other than rome, more.

We would recommend using regional trains ('regionale veloc' on Italian railways website) on all the legs here. They a slower than hi-speed ones, but much cheaper.
Venice-Bologna: ticket fare is only 9.3 EUR, trains operate really often (like every hour). Bologna-Florence is the same story, ticket fare is only 7.15 EUR, couple direct trains per day or multiple connections with one easy change in Prato. Florence-Rome, 17.05 EUR for ticket, direct trains run every two hours.

Next would be fly to istanbul, fly to venice. Vienna, Munich, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam OR Vienna, Salzburg (get off the train for maybe 1/2 a day?), Munich, Prague Berlin, Amsterdam

Let us clarify first. You intend to come back to Venice from Istanbul just in order to travel from there to Vienna? If so, then is Venice is a must on your way from Istanbul to Vienna? Because you know... you actually travel a bit more straight way - for instance fly cheap WizzAir Istanbul-Budapest and use train to Vienna from there, it will save your money and time.
Meanwhile, about route from Vienna towards later destinations. Since there are probably would be at least two or maybe even 4 passenger, than your best and cheapest way to travel Vienna-Salzburg is to use Einfach-Raus Ticket (http://www.oebb.at/en/Tickets/Groups/Einfach-Raus-Ticket/index.jsp ), it is a group pass (for up to 5 passengers) which cost only 28 EUR for everybody and it is valid for all the regional trains in Austria, thus with its help you will reach Salzburg really cheap. The only inconvenience is that you will need to make at least 2 changes (usually in St.Valentin and Linz), but that is not a problem with nicely organized train system in Austria.
Salzburg-Munich: best and cheapest option is so called Bayern-Ticket (Bavaria-Ticket) - http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/prices/germany/laender-ticket.shtml . Similar story as Einfach-Raus Ticket, but for Bavaria region (including Salzburg), also cost 28 EUR for up 5 passengers.
Munich-Prague: here it is also better to us Bavaria ticket, but a bit modified one - Bavaria-Bohemi (Bayern-Böhmen)-Ticket, also for up to 5 people, cost 33 EUR, but valid not only in Bavaria region, but for neighboring Czech regions as well. In your case it will be valid till Plzen (train Munich-Prague goes via Plzen), so you will use it till Plzen, while from Plzen simply purchase regular domestic ticket Plzen-Prague, you can do it either online (https://www.cd.cz/eshop/), at the station or even on board of the train, so you won't need to get off in Plzen, there is a group discount for domestic Czech tickets as well.
Prague-Berlin: here you can have two options:
a) purchase some time in advance discounted SporoTicket Prague-Berlin from Czech railways eShop (https://www.cd.cz/eshop/international/search_int.aspx?tt=1). You will be able to use fast international train then.
b) use SONE+DB/REGIONet+DB (info about it on our Czech page) till German stations, while from there use group pass, depending on day of the week either Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket or Happy Weekend Ticket (info about those on our German page)
Berlin-Amsterdam: as well two options:
a) purchase in advance discounted tickets (http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en?newrequest=yes&protocol=http:&), from 39 EUR per passenger.
b) use same Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket or Happy Weekend Ticket to travel till German-Dutch border and purchase there Dutch domestic till Amsterdam.

904

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Europe Disaster.. Need serious Help

« on: February 23, 2011, 01:33:58 am »

First of all, we would agree with Alex, you need to figure out "must" destinations for you and then simply list all those, so we can start thinking about particular itinerary and best way to manage ticket question.

As of now, we can only give you couple preliminary things. For instance, for London-Paris train journey pass is absolutely useless due to huge supplement, in many cases simply purchased in advance ticket is actually cheaper. Paris to Madrid on budget...hmmm... we would probably recommend aviation (there are plenty of good options), with Paris to Barcelona it is again either flight or you can actually do a trick to avoid expensive overnight elipsos train by purchasing discounted ticket till last French station (Cerbere) + regional from border to Barcelona. South of France part really depends on either your plan multiple long stops on the way (like for a night or one day), if not, then pass might actually beat the regular ticket, if yes, then short legs travel (like Marseilles to Nice or Nice to Monaco) cheaper to do with straight forward point to point tickets. For Italy you can actually go with regional trains, especially looking for your listed destinations (Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome). Those regional trains are relatively cheap and not gone loose a lot of time, but win a lot on money spent. In Central and South-Eastern Europe pass is almost always gone lose to point to point tickets. With Austria and Germany you can actually use nice local group passes, which will allow both of you unlimited travels. Eurail Pass there makes sense only for long-distance legs.

And the last general advice to take into account: the whole idea between making a choice in favor of pass or against it is simple math. In every pass you have app. day value (total price of the pass divided by number of days pass is valid for). Then you compare this number to potential point to point ticket price for the leg planned for first, second, third etc. days of your travels. So at the end you can see what makes more sense. That is why we asked for more specific "must" destinations, so we can help you with this comparison.   

905

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Bratislava to Prague

« on: February 23, 2011, 01:01:05 am »

I wanted to let you know that I got my SC reservation for free - did they make a mistake? I know that it is free for some tickets - but when I read it (bearing in mind that I don't really speak Slovak) it seemed to say that it was for 1st class, discounted cards, etc, etc.

That is actually a tricky question, since ZSSK on there own website (http://www.slovakrail.sk/index.php?id=zalohy0) lists 'CityStar' under '7 EUR reservation', but on the other hand we can read under '0 EUR' the following: "vydáva sa len na 2. vozňovú triedu a len k priamym cestovným lístkom v susedskej preprave ZSSK – ČD (vrátane zľavnených cestovných lístkov, CityStar ZSSK – ČD a traťového spiatočného mesačného cestovného lístka Bratislava – Břeclav a Bratislava - Brno)...". Thus obviously they do distinguish CityStar ZSSK–ČD and simple/other CityStars, our guess that this probably the reason for your 0 EUR. Czech railways on the contrary don't bother to make such detailed overview and simply say that (http://www.cd.cz/mezinarodni-cestovani/jizdenka/slevy-evropa/-9329/) passengers need to pay for reservation only with domestic tickets, tickets not purchased from CD or ZSSK and passes. As you can see, with Czech explanation it is more obvious that you don't need to pay for reservation, while with Slovak it is a bit more complicated.
Anyway it turned out to be a good thing that you didn't purchase reservation online 

906

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: overnight train from Prague to Salzburg

« on: February 22, 2011, 09:50:51 pm »

I am going to leave Prague on Jun 27 night time and reach Salzuburg in the next morning. Has anyone experience on this issue.

Hmm... the problem here is that the distance between Prague and Salzburg are rather short for a full scale overnight journey, plus there is no reasonable overnight connection (even considering change of trains) between two cities. So we would probably advice you a bit different options:
a) simply stay another night in Prague and start your trip in the morning (5:16-11:49 or 7:16-13:49, both require two changes of trains, in Ceske Budejovice and Linz). For the 7:16 connection you can even purchase discounted international ticket for 29 EUR.
b) catch last train from Prague towards Austrian border, for instance train #659 Praha hl.n.-Ceske Budejovice (22:16-00:56), spend the night in Ceske Budejovice and in the morning catch the very first train to Austria, with such schedule you can be in Salzburg at 9:49.
c) if you really want to spend most of the night on the train, then you can go via Vienna. But such choice isn't really rational and it will be more expensive to travel in such way.

907

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: Multi Trip - Krakow to Warsaw to Lodz to Ostrava to Oswiecim to to Krakow

« on: February 22, 2011, 09:30:14 pm »

I'll attempt to use the bus then if it's not too confusing to find (you said it's right there near the train).

It is really easy to find, but just in case here you can see the map -  http://www.rda.krakow.pl/imagesrc/plan-ok.gif
Bus station is the building next to railway station ("PKP Krakow Glowny") with sign "Regionalny dworzec autobusowy" and red arrow pointing to it. On the same website you can even find the plan of the bus station inside - http://www.rda.krakow.pl/en/index.php?k=1&id=1044

908

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: Interlaken to prague (eventually)

« on: February 19, 2011, 03:04:17 am »

Hmmm... Interlaken-Salzburg is basically 7-8 hours, Salzburg-Budapest around 6 hours, Budapest-Prague around 7 hours. In most cases the trains are rather good, so we would say it is not a problem to travel 6-8 hours at a time.
Interlaken-Salzburg: SBB website sells only Zurich-Salzburg ticket online (from 50 CHF, https://www.sbb.ch/mct/wi/shop/b2c/pipSchritt_2.do), but Austrian Railways website offers Interlaken-Salzburg (we found for as low as 39 EUR, https://ticket.oebb.at/bin/frame_ticket.pl?ticket=jticket.pl&LANG=EN). In both cases purchase in advance required, usually couple month in advance is enough to get the best fare.
Salzburg-Budapest: also better to purchase in advance, either from already mentioned OeBB website (from 39 EUR) or same tickets sold by DB as well (same 39 EUR for daytime or from 29 EUR for overnight train Munich-Salzburg-Budapest).
Budapest-Prague: actually Hungarian railways does sell discounted tickets online, but interface is only in Hungarian though, not very difficult, so google translator usually enough. Budapest-Prague daytime starts from 19 EUR (http://www.mav-start.hu/eticket/nemzetkozi_e_ticket.php). Same discounted tickets can be bought from the ticket counter at the station, but only at least 3 days before departure.

909

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Bracciano to Interlaken

« on: February 19, 2011, 02:45:38 am »

Well, TrenItalia website is not very good, thus sometimes there are problems with purchasing rather complicated international ticket like yours. So the only type of ticket you can buy from them in your case seems to be Bracciano/Rome-Spiez. Spiez is basically located on the route of all the direct Milan-Basel trains, that is why probably available, it's only 15 minuted from Interlaken, so not a big problem to purchase additional ticket Spiez-Interlaken already on spot.
As result, one of the options is to hunt for Smart price discounted tickets (Smart1 or Smart2 tariff) in advance for that route. Just a quick look showed fares around 110-120 EUR for nearest date or around 150 EUR full fare.
Another option is to purchase Italian domestic ticket till Milan or even last Italian station before Swiss border (Domodossola), those are easily purchasable from TrenItalia website (fares depend on type of train, but even the fastest option might be around 50-60 EUR). From there you can either purchase domestic Swiss (from border to Interlaken, full fare will cost app. 40 CHF while discounted can be twice lower) or international Milano-Spiez (as low as 19 EUR).
We would probably recommend to use later option and go with regional ticket Bracciano-Rome (purchased before departure, only 2.7 EUR), ticket Rome-Milan (purchased good advance from TrenItalia website) and international Milan-Spiez (purchased good advance from TrenItalia website).

910

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: Multi Trip - Krakow to Warsaw to Lodz to Ostrava to Oswiecim to to Krakow

« on: February 18, 2011, 04:55:27 pm »

If I take the earliest Monday morning train from Warsaw to Cieszyn, I assume I would have to make a change in Krakow and then get another ticket there to Cieszyn?  Or is there a daytime train straight from Warsaw?

Well, cheap trains from Warsawa to Krakow in the morning are TLK13101 (6:11-9:31, 54 PLN), IR 13521 (6:40-10:00, 43.5 PLN) and IR 13121 (7:54-11:00, 43.5 PLN). From Krakow at that hour it is better to use direct bus to Cieszyn instead of trains. It will be faster and more convenient. Buses Krakow-Cieszyn run at 9:45am, 10:20am, 10:40am, 11:40am etc. All of them take 2:50-3:00 hours, cost 18.5 PLN. Krakow bus station is on the same square as main railways station.

Also approx how long would that train from Warsaw to Ciezyn take (since it's only 40 mins from there to Ostrava)?

Lets take the latest option from above: depart from Warsaw at 7:54am, arrive to Krakow at 11:00am, depart on 11:40 bus, arrive to Cieszyn at around 14:30. Trains from Czech station to Ostrava depart 14:43, 15:03, 15:43 etc. So as you can see, if you are lucky you might make it for 14:43 one, if not then 15:03 train almost for sure. As result you can roughly count on 4pm arrival to Ostrava. Earlier departure from Warsaw makes earlier arrival to Ostrava, but with roughly same timing spent on the road.

911

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Bratislava to Prague

« on: February 16, 2011, 12:46:06 pm »

I think I've just asked for a 'return' in the past, and they gave me a City Star.

Yes, this is exactly how it usually goes - CityStar by default.

But don't you need to specify which train you will take with a City Star? I know which trains I want to take, but I'm just wondering for the future.

No, no need to specify the train. Moreover SC is the only one with compulsory reservation, others are just hop-in/hop-off. The only thing you need to specify is the starting day of validity. Usually cashiers do issue from the day of purchase, but upon request they can make it valid from any day in near future. CityStar, as same as standard international tickets, is valid for one month

Also, I'm planning to return on the SC train (for which I need a 8 Euro reservation). My question is, can I buy this return reservation in Bratislava, or will I have to wait until I'm in Prague?

You can do it in Bratislava without any problems or purchase it online from CD eShop (will cost 174 CZK)

912

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Bratislava to Prague

« on: February 16, 2011, 12:38:01 am »

Actually CityStar and interstate tariff ZSSK-CD are rather different things. Interstate "preprava ZSSK-CD" it is 50% off standard SCIC-NRT/TCV tariff for Czech part and 60% off Slovak part (when purchasing in Slovakia) or 50% and 55% respectively (when purchasing in Czech Republic).
CityStar is much more tricky, it gives 30% off "preprava ZSSK-CD" for the first person and 20% off fare of the first person's fare for second, third etc. That is why CityStar Bratislava-Prague for one person cost 34.6 EUR (for two passengers 34.6+34.6*0.8 ), while same return ticket Bratislava-Prague with regular "preprava ZSSK-CD" will cost roughly 30% more.
As a rule ticket cashiers in Czech Republic/Slovakia simply issue cheapest option by default (in this case CityStar) without even asking, so most of the passengers might not even know that they using CityStar instead of regular ticket.

913

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: Multi Trip - Krakow to Warsaw to Lodz to Ostrava to Oswiecim to to Krakow

« on: February 14, 2011, 04:40:04 pm »

Someone had suggested maybe seeing Olomouc as well.  How are the trains from C. Tesin to there?

Roughly twice as long. Train ride C.Tesin-Olomouc takes app. 2 hours, during the day direct train run every 2 hours (7:03am, 9:03am, 11:03am etc.) and plenty of connections with one or two changes. Ticket fare - 179 CZK (if purchased online) or 184 CZK (if purchased at the station)

914

Train fares and tariffs / Re: Check TCV tariffs?

« on: February 13, 2011, 11:44:15 pm »

I was in Masaryk train station and the cashier seem to finally work out how to sell TCV tickets point to point. When I requested to add via points she asked me where I was from and upon hearing that I was not from Europe she refused to sell me such tickets! Save her a lot of work trying to figure out the fare system which she is supposed to be familiar with in the first place!

Hmm... incompetence of railway cashiers in Prague surprises us with every message from you, unfortunately. We couldn't even imagine such stupid thing as selling standard international point to point ticket according to citizenship     One thing is when ticket cashier simply doesn't know how to issue certain ticket, but the other is when he/she intentionally or not invents citizenship factor in order to refuse... extremely incompetent. Citizenship factor matters only when purchasing passes (for instance Eurail vs. Interrail), but never with regular tickets.   
Anyway, sorry that we advised you something that, unfortunately, turned out to be difficult to accomplish.

I worked out Italy's regional express tickets prices and they seem to be rather reasonable, albeit a little slower than the IC trains.

Just as a reminder, tickets for regional trains in Italy are valid only for 6 hours since the time of validation (you need to do it before boarding), thus you can't accomplish trick with a stop on the way, unless all together with ride it takes more than 6 hours. For example, you can't purchase one through ticket Venice-Florence and stop in Bologna for a day. In such case you will just need two separate tickets.

915

Travel plans, routes and timetables / Re: Multi Trip - Krakow to Warsaw to Lodz to Ostrava to Oswiecim to to Krakow

« on: February 11, 2011, 03:50:15 pm »

do both countries know each others language at all?

In Silesia you probably won't have big problems, since the region borders with Polish Silesia, thus connections, including linguistic, is rather strong still (for instance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silesian_language)

I know I've heard Slovak and Czech have a hard time understanding each other even when they use the same alphabet.

Imho, this is much more political thing. Actually Czech and Slovak are much closer languages then Czech and Polish for instance.

I have a Polish/English Phrase book and was wondering if people in Ostrava might understand Polish.  Or would it be better for me to get a seperate Czech phrase book instead?  I just don't want to try and learn both languages, so want to focus on just one if I can...

Well, they don't speak Polish in Ostrava, but mostly people there can, at least roughly, understand the context of what you are trying to say if you do it in Polish