So as may have been clear from another thread, we will be going to Europe for a vacation one week from today. We are starting in Frankfurt, Germany, and we want to travel around a bit.

To do this, we ended up buying a "Eurail select pass" for travel in a few countries.

I recently found out that you also have to reserve seats for some trains.

I'd like to know how important it is to reserve seats for trains in advance. That is, is it common to just go to the station and ask for a reservation on the same day?

We booked a hotel for the first part of our stay, but after we travel a bit, we will need to reserve hotels for the other locations we're going to. I'm hesitant to reserve seats for train travel since it puts a lot of pressure on us not to miss any departures.

I'm also hesitant about when we should book hotels since we don't know much about the train schedules... All in all, I'm kind of a novice when it comes to European travel.

Should I be sure to book all hotels in advance? Should I be sure to reserve all train seats in advance? Should I just wait until we get there?

Any tips or advice about traveling would be appreciated. If it matters, we are going to Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland.

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be immersed

I cannot tell you about the conditions of the "Eurail pass", but reservations at the Deutsche Bahn usually work like this:

Reserving a seat in the Deutsche Bahn trains costs 2.50 € when you buy it together with the ticket at the ticket machine, and 4.50 € when you buy it at the counter in the Reisezentrum; this is possible until the last moment (I think).

A reservation has two numbers: "Wagen" (wagon) and "Platz" (seat). On the platform, there are big cubes with letters A-F hanging from the ceiling, and a diagram "Wagenstandanzeiger" where you can find out roughly where each wagon will come to halt, so that you do not need to wander through the train too long, dragging your suitcase.

The seats are often marked only with "ggf. freigeben" (roughly "vacate if necessary"), which means that other people may sit there but have to vacate the place for you when you show your reservation. The seat numbers are often confusingly ordered (I have not yet determined the logic behind this).

There are times, like Friday evening and Sunday evening, where it is really recommendable to have reservations. When you look up a connection on the internet site (bahn.de), you will sometimes see this big R when looking at the train details:



which means that this train will be quite full, so reservations are recommended. If you do not have a reservation, it is often the wagons at either end of the train which have some free seats.

The Deutsche Bahn has found it worthwhile to partially repeat announcements on the stations and in the trains in bad English with bad accent, which might help you a bit.

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A good system naturally covers all corner cases without further effort.

Excellent information, Harleqin. Thank you.

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be immersed

I don't know how important to reserve seat. But I saw a couple who did not reserve their seat on the train from Pairs to Amesterdan. They were fined more than 300 euro for it. They argued in american english with the french controler for a while, but had finally payed the amount, all by cash. That's how i remembered it.

btw, it was in first class. So i'm not sure whether they were charged because they sit there without a reservation or simply because they don'thave a reservation. I heard the french controler repeated 'but you need a reservation, but you need a reservation...'

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长考出臭棋.

I would recommend using Deutsche Bahn's website to search for train schedules in advance. They have accurate schedules for most European railways, I think.

EDIT: can't find much interesting info about Eurail, but it is roughly equivalent to Interrail, so maybe this webpage is interesting? I think the ICE trains are the normal city-to-city trains in Germany, and they supposedly require no prior reservation for Interrail travellers (although keep Harlequin's advice about traveling during busy hours in mind). ICE France-Germany or other International ICE do, however, so I think you should book those in advance.