Hi, I was trying to optimize expendidures for following section of my travel: Duesseldorf - Arnhem (stopover 1 day) - Utrecht (stopover 1 day) - Amsterdam (stopover 2 days) - Haarlem (stopover few hours) - Leiden (stopover few hours) - Gouda (stopover few hours) - Rotterdam/Utrecht/Delft (stopover 2 days total for this agglomeration) - Roosendaal
I decided that I can try to cover all this by Europa Spezial Niederlande.
Last year I've did similar trick for Switzerland with Europa Spezial Schweiz and it was fine (zugbinding in ticket was only for ICE from Germany to Switherland and further long route by Switherland without zugbinding and ticket was valid for 1 month, so I've spend wonderful 9 days in Switherland using this ticket for section. But the ticket was purchased in counter (I had possibility to visit DB counter 2 month before my travel started).
This year I decided to attemtp to repeat the same trick for my new travel to Benilux, but difference was that this year I'm not able to buy ticket on DB train station in advance, so I decided to purchase online via DB website.
I managed to made DB website to show itineary with route in Netherlands Arnhem - Utrecht - Amsterdam - Haarlem - Leiden - Den Haag - Rotterdam - Roosendaal (it was not possible to make it Leiden - Rotterdam via Leiden instead via Den Haag using only 2 Ueber fields of DB website, but it's not a big issue, I've decided to purchase domestic tickets on this sections, because they are short and thus inexpensive) and purchased it online.
Probably my mistake was that I've choosen ticket delivery method as DB online ticket (PDF printable on A4), because I've never seen before how DB online ticket with zugbindung looks like and hoped it has same information like paper ticket.
But result was a little bit different as I expected.
As you can see - field VIA contains only
<1080>D-Hbf 7:42 ICE 222 VIA: Emmerich (Gr)<1184>
I hoped to get ticket with VIA containind something like
VIA <1080>D-Hbf 7:42 ICE 222 VIA: Emmerich (Gr)<1184>haarlem*rotterdam c.
and no other trains to be mentioned in zugbinding except ICE222 for first section. But VIA has no explanation of further route in Netherlands, but in bottom under "Ihre Reiseverbindung und Reservierung Hinfahrt am 24.07.2014" special trains are shown for domestic part within Netherlands, which is absolutely ruins my plans - I was not expecting that my ticket will contain specific train after Arnhem so I've choosen them on DB website not accurate, additionally accurate choosing on all section was impossible while you have just 2
Ueber fields.)
My questions are:
1. does the conditions of Europa Spezial Schweiz and Europa Spezial Nederlande differs and zugbinding in Netherlands exist. Or just specific trains for Netherlands part of my travel is result of usage of online ticket instead of paper ticket? Or may be my fears are vain and I can use any train in Netherlands in any day of my ticket validity period (15 days from 24 Jul to 07 Aug)?
2. Is there a possibility to convert already purchased Europa Spezial which was purchased as DB Online Ticket to paper ticket.
For example I can see DB Auftragsnummer on my online ticket. I've read that in some cases this number is possible to enter to DB ticket machine and get paper ticket. May be this will work in my case and I'll get paper ticket similar to the ticket I've had last year for Switzerland (with zugbinding only for ICE used on first section and route on Netherland part specified just by intermediate station in VIA field)