Eurail Passes: To Buy or Not to Buy

As I mentioned in my Paris post and probably others, Eurail passes are a mixed bag.  It's unclear if we actually made up the amount of money that we paid for ours, although based on very rough estimations, we think we may have.  I'm not sure I want to run the numbers, though.

The passes are wonderful for hopping on and off regional trains at will, which we did many times. Without one, we may not have just hopped over to Pisa for a few hours.  It was also nice not to have to wait in lines to buy tickets every time we wanted to catch a train.  Some of those ticket lines were long!

Also, Switzerland has some lovely benefits for Eurail pass holders, namely that a pass covers the ferries in both Interlaken and Lucerne.  Woot!

However, there are a number of downsides:

1.  People aged 26 and older are not able to buy a second class pass.  We had to buy a first class pass, which was over $400 more per person (and that's with the discount you get for buying one 'group' pass for two people instead of two individual passes!).  I'm not going to lie, I enjoyed first class.  It was easy to get a seat because it was so often empty, and it frequently had some cushy benefits.  But not being allowed to buy anything else seems silly.

2. France severely limits the number of seats available for Eurail pass holders.  It would seem it is especially limited in first class.  We were told there were no first class seats available on a train that we noticed was very empty when we boarded.  And first class was usually much more empty than second class.

3. France charges a lot of money for reservations.  We paid 54 Euro (for the two of us) for a 3 hour first class train ride from Paris to Basel (Switzerland).  However, we did get breakfast, which was pretty exciting to me.  We paid 109 Euro for the first class "super reclining seats" on the overnight train from Spain to Paris.  As a point of comparison, we paid 6 Euro for local trains and 20 Euro for longer trains in Italy.

4. Making reservations for future train rides is an extreme pain in the arse, except in Italy where you can make reservations online using your rail pass (France allowed online reservations, but you couldn't tell it you had a rail pass).  As I mentioned in the Paris post, we spent 2 hours trying to make reservations for a Swiss train.  Not fun.  After Austria (or maybe even starting in Austria), we avoided all trains that required reservations.  Of course, that was easy to do since few trains require reservations in those countries.

5. Eurail ticket offices are not easy to find (thanks, France) and sometimes are even closed and long gone (thanks, Spain).

6. The pass itself is ridiculously flimsy!

This shows the front side.  I folded part of it to hide personal details.

Back side of the pass.   This is the full size of the sheet.

The official pass part is two little pieces of paper stapled to a much larger piece of paper that folds many times over.  There's a huge section where you must write down every train you take.  If you don't, ticket checkers may fine you or tear up the pass (supposedly).  This makes sense for those who have passes that can only be used for a certain number of days.  Ours was continuous, so what does it matter?  I skipped writing down a few of the small train hops, but wrote down the rest, mostly for our own records.  Only a couple of ticket checkers looked at it on the over 80 trains we rode.  Not to mention, the space provided isn't long enough for all the trains, so here's the very official piece of paper on which we recorded the remainder:

7.  If something happens to your rail pass (stolen, lost, etc), you must report it within 24 hours, and they will not replace it.  Your only option is to keep all receipts and records of any money you spend on trains, and they will supposedly reimburse you.  This made me paranoid, so I kept ours in my money belt the entire trip, which is why it looks rather wrinkled.

In the end, I am glad we had one.  Not having to buy tickets was awesome.  However, for a shorter trip, or one that includes fewer countries, it may not be worth it.  Especially if you'll be spending a lot of time in France, where reservations are ridiculously pricey, or in Italy, where trains are actually really cheap without a pass.

Why Germany Rocks

Paul says Germany may be his favorite country so far, and I have to agree that we had a pretty awesome time there.  Just some of the many reasons why Germany rocks include:

1. There's a lot a green space.  While we spent some time in bustling Munich, we didn't have to go very far to find lovely parks and green areas.  The other two locations we visited were a bit more remote and therefore also quite green.

English Garden in Munich

2. Germans seem to love the outdoors, which makes us feel like they are "our peeps."  It also means that they are often geared up for hiking and biking, and thus not overly concerned with fashion, unlike Italy, France and others.  That means we fit in better as well, being the rather untrendy sort (well, I can't speak for Liz, but Paul and I certainly don't think of ourselves as trendy).

3. The trains are great!  They are well-labelled, both on and off the train.  They are in great shape.  The same trains always depart from the same tracks.  And it's easy to avoid trains that require reservations - very nice for us Eurail pass holders.

4. Germany is affordable.  It was pretty easy to get a reasonably priced meal.  Water does seem to be more expensive there than elsewhere, but maybe that's just because 3 Euros for a bottle of water seems proportionately more expensive when your meal is pretty cheap.

5. We had almost no problem getting around (minus a little confusion in the main Cologne station on the way to Belgium) even though we don't speak German.  Of course, Liz does speak some German, so maybe that's skewing our perspective a bit.

6. Lack of pickpockets.  In reality, there probably weren't any in Austria or Switzerland either, but it's so nice not to have to be on your guard - unlike Italy and Barcelona!

7. Castles! Gratuitous castle photo:

Photo by Liz

8. Biergartens!  Who wouldn't love those? :)

9. Good food.  Although maybe a few too many sausages...  However, I did love the curry ketchup they use for some of the sausages.  I'm going to have to start putting curry in my ketchup back in the States.  Yum!  It's good with french fries as well.

Apple Strudel and Beer!

We definitely recommend visiting Germany.  :)  Look for more posts about Germany soon!

Lovely Interlaken

We spent one night in Interlaken in an amazing hostel.  If you are ever in Interlaken, I cannot possibly recommend Backpackers Villa more highly.  It was one of the cleanest places we stayed, and it had free lockers in the rooms.  Now that is a genius idea for a hostel.  Everyone was super-friendly, and there were lots of places to sit and relax.  We would happily have stayed there many more nights if we weren't eager to be on our way to Gimmelwald.

Switzerland is, well, beautiful, as you might expect.  The train ride in was quite pretty (and included breakfast - woot!).  Paul snapped several photos:

For lunch, I enjoyed a burger that included shredded carrots, something I think our US burgers are sorely lacking:

Interlaken is sandwiched between two lakes - Lake Thun and Lake Brienz.  We had hoped to ride one of the ferries to a castle on Lake Thun, but the ferry hours just didn't work out.  Instead, we hopped on one of the Lake Brienz ferries and floated along for three hours as it made its loop around the lake.  Switzerland has some great Eurail pass benefits, among them the ability to ride the ferries in Interlaken and Lucerne for free (or, as Paul is keen to point out, more like pre-paid, since our Eurail pass was pretty pricey!).  Paul got himself a beer:

And we enjoyed the endless views:

We topped off the day with dinner at the top of the ugliest and tallest building (a hotel) in Interlaken and enjoyed watching the paragliders land: