Trains in Germany, Holland, Switzerland, France, England???
 

Hello all you Germans, Dutch, Swiss, French and Brits,

I have a question about the train tickets in Europe. I know that you need compulsory seating for IC, ICE, EuroCity, Schnellzug etc... How much is that extra fee? I mean the cost that comes on top of ordinary tickets. Since we have the Interrail card, we don't have to pay for the tickets themselves, but only for the extra fee, and I have no idea how much this is.

If anyone could give me a fee, even an estimate, I would be very very thankful!!! :D This would be very important in estimating our budget for the summer...

i don't have a clue, laura :( :oops:
try this website: www.deutschebahn.de or this one: http://www.bahn.de/pv/int_guest/offe...uropeans.shtml
it should give you all the details you need
good luck :wink:

you may already know this one, but i'll still give you another link:
http://www.interrailnet.com/asp/homepage/index.asp

I travelled around Belgium, France and Spain with Interrail in 2001 and I remember that I was really supprised by the extra fee on the TGV's in France - it was less than I expected. The extra fee for Paris to Marseille was less than 5 Euro for example. But, travelling by train in Holland isn't cheap, neither are the extra fees. Compared to the TGV's in France I had to pay much more for the Thalys from Amsterdam to Paris (just checked it - that was an extra fee of about 20 Euro). I don't really know if there's a standard rating for the fees though...
As far as I know you only have to pay extra in Holland on the Thalys from Amsterdam to Brussels & Paris and the ICE to Germany. All other trains are free with Interrail (unless you'd travel First Class, but you don't want to do that). I believe there are no more overnight trains leaving from any city in Holland to other countries, so there's no problem with extra fees on those... In other countries you usually have to pay extra for overnight trains if you book a couchette or whatever kind of sleeping place there's available - normal seatings in overnight trains usually don't cost you anything extra.

I hope this helps you a little - I know I searched a lot two years ago on the WWW for the extra costs, but couldn't find them anywhere. It's kind of hard to tell what the costs are exactly and the prices I just mentioned are from the pre-Euro era, I guess they changes quite a bit as well.

Thanks Choc for the links - we will check them out for sure. :D

That's good news :D We will be going through France, and it's good to know that it isn't too expensive...

:shock: Fortunately we won't be going to France from Holland... ;)

That's good to know, thanks Sara. :D We won't be using Thalys, but we will arrive in Amsterdam by IC - is that also as expensive as Thalys? In Finland, the IC extra fee is around 5 euros - can we assume that it's quite the same in Central Europe?

It does help :D It's a pain to find any exact prices for nearly anything from the web, especially train fares. :roll:

Btw, Sara, we're looking for hostels in Amsterdam right now (Taija is sitting on a computer next to me). :D Looks like there are a lot of cheap options - thanks for your help before! :D[/quote]

You'll be arriving in Amsterdam from Germany right? I'm not sure about the IC from Germany - but I do know that there is no extra fee at all on the IC from Brussels, Belgium. That one is almost considered as a normal, national train - I actually take that train almost everyday for travelling to my university, without any bookings or extra costs or whatsoever. Maybe it's the same with the German IC, but I don't know really. Lol I should ask my neighbours, they're German and probably know everything about IC's to and from Germany. Anyway - my guess is that, if there's an extra fee, it won't be much :)

:D you're welcome

It all depends on where your going and when your going as to how much a train ticket costs. There are a lot of different prices.

try: www.thetrainline.com or www.virgintrains.co.uk

compulsory?

Reserved? Dont book a ticket, just get on with a normal one and take the reserved ticket out of the top of the seat! Everyone does it

and beware because UK train tickets are a rip off!

even if you, like I, try booking 4 weeks or more in advance half the time they don't have the cheap tickets they claim they do.

Thx for the advice, :D but I'm not concerned about the actual ticket prices, but the extra fees for some trains.

We are gonna buy the InterRail ticket, for 30 days we can travel in trains all over Europe for free (well, for 389 euros). So I don't have to pay for the tickets themselves (which is a relief, I understand that the British tickets are expensive). But what the InterRail ticket doesn't cover are the compulsory fees for some trains (eg. IC and ICE in Europe cost some extra money), and this is what we have to pay. I have no idea if there are trains with this extra fee in England, and what the fee would be... Hopefully it isn't a lot, our travel budget is huge as it is... :shock:

Eh, Goose? What do you mean???