Germany / Italy seat reservations with a (ugh) Eurail global pass
Replies: 7 - Last Post: Oct 25, 2012 2:06 PM Last Post By: zapnap
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Germany / Italy seat reservations with a (ugh) Eurail global pass
Ugh. I certainly regret not researching the pass situation more thoroughly; I'd read a couple guidebooks that suggested the passes held good value for multi-country hops still. But in reality this has been nothing but painful and I'm quite sure we would have saved money buying point to point, even hopping around as much as we have for the past few weeks. Anyway, here's my question of the day:I have a Eurail global pass.
I need to travel from Munich to Venice next week.
I understand that this route typically has one connection: Munich -> Verona, and then Verona -> Venice.
The Verona to Venice portion of the trip requires a seat reservation.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to get said seat reservation.
I can't get them from ItaliaRail, it seems. I'm told that I must be in the country already and purchase it from a ticket counter. Problem is I'll have a 30 minute connection window, and there's a good chance all those reservations will be sold out (or maybe not, but I'd really rather not take that risk). The only place I've found that I can reserve these seats online is raileurope.com, but they don't give me an option for an e-ticket. The only option they'll give me is to ship the physical tickets, and obviously that isn't going to work.
I'm at a loss. Does anyone have any advice / suggestions / a magical solution? I'm afraid that I may need to just buy full price tickets with reservations, but that would defeat the purpose of having this (admittedly terrible) rail pass that good money has already been paid for. Any help very (very!) much appreciated.
..nap
1
The bad news is that (at least to my knowledge) there's no way to get the seat reservation only booking online. The good news is that even if you miss the connecting train, there's fairly regular service, including regional trains that don't need a supplement/reservation. Unless you really need to arrive at Venice at a particular time, I would relax and the situation should work out fine.2
Fair point. Just trying to maximize time is all. Also, it turns out that you CAN reserve seats when you have a railpass via http://italiarail.com. I guess I had overlooked that before.Still can't seem to reserve a seat on the German leg of the trip, but reservations are not compulsory for the Munich to Verona leg. I can't imagine that sells out often so not going to worry too too much about it.
3
You can reserve Munich to Verona at a railway station counter in Germany (and also some other countries). This costs EUR 4,00. You can ask at the counter also about the Verona - Venice leg. The fast trains on this route require however a surcharge for pass holders (I think it's EUR 10,00). The regional trains on this route are covered by your rail pass and seat reservation is on these not even possible.7
Thanks, I'll try to reserve the German leg when we get to Munich tomorrow. I'm not too worried about that part, just the part that required reservation that is now taken care of. My understanding is if you don't have a reservation on a train where it's not compulsory, you just might end up standing or something (not ideal, but not the end of the world either). Usually I wouldn't care but I'm traveling with my wife so having a reserved seat is a bonus ;-).As for the overnight train, I've heard the stretch between Munich and Verona is actually quite beautiful, so we wanted to see it during the day. Definitely taking advantage of overnights on other parts of our trip though. Thanks for your answers and suggestions everyone!
