I should’ve made a note of this while I was booking the reservations, but didnt because I am rubbish.
So today, because I was bored and work doesn’t start until Monday, I looked up the prices for the journeys we made, using the same booking delays as the original tickets, and through the same companies I used to make the reservation.
Travel day one: Angoulême – Strasbourg – Basel – Zurich – Zagreb
I made the Angoulême – Strasbourg reservation on the 19th April at the station, so about three months before departure. I looked on the SNCF site for the same train at the beginning of November and, if I bought it today, the cheapest single first-class ticket would cost 83€. The reservation fee for the pass was 10€.
We didn’t need reservations for the Strasbourg – Zurich leg. The cost of a ticket on the SNCF site for first class on the next train to Zurich is 88€.
I booked the Zurich – Zagreb train about three months in advance because we wanted to make sure we got the two-berth sleeper compartment. I made the reservation over the phone with the ÖBB, and it was 148€, or 74€ each. If I booked it online today via the ÖBB web site – I’m not going to waste their time ringing them up – for the same date in November, it would cost us 129€ each.
This was a great journey. First of all there was the excitement of getting to Angoulême for 09:46 and knowing we wouldn’t get to where we were going until 10:43 the following morning. By the time we got on the Nightjet to Zagreb we were ready for bed and happy we’d paid the fee for the sleeper, even if I didn’t get my free ÖBB slippers or the introductory bottle of sparkle-fizz. The view for the parts we were awake was breathtaking.
Travel day two: Zagreb – Vienna – Bratislava
I booked this on the phone with the ÖBB one month in advance, because I was so impressed with them the first time I called them and asked in Google German if I could speak to them in English. “I’m zo zorry, my English is utterly appalling but I’ll do my best!”
The ÖBB is utterly brilliant, not only befcause of their customer service but because reservations are not compulsory. If you make one, it wil cost 3,50€. If you buy the ticket today, the journey would cost 63€.
This train had a proper restaurant. We were treated to some of the same scenery we’d seen on the Zürich – Zagreb train, and we had somewhere to sit and eat while we watched it.
How fabulous.
Travel day three: Bratislava – Oradea
We just walked onto the Bratislava – Vienna train and it was included in the pass, but tomorrow’s 08:15 Europa Expres costs 14€.
I booked the Vienna – Oradea train on the phone a month in advance so I could choose our seats, with the help of Vagonweb. The reservation fee was 3,50€. The ÖBB web site currently shows a single in first at 82,90€.
There wasn’t much to do on this one, and the first class coach was missing, but there was plenty to look at and we had a nice picnic; trains in Romania are not fast so you need to take your own food and be prepared to sleep, read a good book, or take lots of photos.
The change in Vienna with coffee in the lounge was very pleasant.
Not a travel day: Oradea – Cluj-Napoca
I bought this two days in advance at the station in Oradea for 13.50€. It is difficult to describe quite how pretty some of this not-express route is.
Travel day four: Cluj-Napoca – Budapest
I really hope this is wrong, but the CFR Calatori site is showing 30€ one-way with a five-day advance purchase.
Compare that to the price of the Vienna-Oradea journey from the ÖBB site and I can’t believe it’s correct. If it is, we should’ve bought the ticket at the station and saved a travel day for something else. In fact, we’d probably have left Cluj-Napoca a day earlier.
As it stands, we paid 3€ for the reservation at the international ticket office in Oradea.
The scenery through the mountains was stunning.
Travel day five: Budapest – Prague
I can’t believe this one. I decided to brave the ÖBB web site to book this one and paid 15€ for the reservation which included the uprade to Business Class for two trains. I even got to select the single isolated seats for both trains. I booked that three weeks in advance; if I book it now, a single ticket would cost 185,60€.
This was my favourite journey simply for how much comfort we got vs. how much we paid. The seats were huge and the view from the private window most enjoyable. On the Austrian track section, we got free sparkle-fizz.
I want to ride this from Zürich to Vienna.
Travel day six: Prague – Berlin – Amsterdam – Rotterdam
I paid 3€ to book the seats for Berlin seven days in advance – when we were in Cluj – on the ČD web site, which now shows 39,24€. This makes it easier to forgive the German children.
The DB site will sell me a ticket to Amsterdam from Berlin one week from now for 99,90€. The pass reservation was 5,90€.
We didn’t need a reservation for the Amsterdam Rotterdam train so just walked straight onto it from the Berlin train waving our passes. Nobody checked them. A ticket for the same train today is 29,17€ on the NS web site.
I liked this because it was the first journey we did where we decided to stop off somewhere, store our luggage, and find things to look at with the help of a friend. I’d quite like to do another hop-on, hop-off journey, but perhaps with fewer bags.
Travel day seven: Rotterdam – Brussels – Mouscron – Lille – Angouleme
The Rotterdam – Brussels train was included in our pass so we walked on and sat down. The same train tomorrow costs 55,20€ on the NS International web site. And I thought French trains were expensive!
For the level of service, they’re better than the Belgian ones. Brussels – Lille leaving on the next train, in first, with no aircon? 37,70€.
Throughout the trip I kept an eye on the SNCF site for trains from Lille to Angoulême and Strasbourg to Angoulême, just in case they needed booking well in advance. In the end I booked the Lille train the night before for 10€. If I’d bought a ticket, I’d now be 117€ poorer.
This was great for the opportunity to stop off in Brussels and Lille and to be add them to the “list of places to go next time”. Brussels Central is probably the best-located station, given how you can hop off and kill an hour quickly while knowing you can get back to the station in very little time. I’m sure Brussels has more than two tourist attractions, but we visited them both on foot.
Kerching!
All of the prices above are the cheapest non-flexible I can get for the day of travel with similar advance times as the tickets I bought.
If I were to do the same journey again, in November, the cost of the tickets without a pass would be approximately 1067,21€. With airline-style pricing from the some rail companies I suspect that would’ve been even higher in August had I thought about doing this then.
My promo seven-day first class Global Pass cost me 401€ and was discounted by 10% and non-refundable. The reservation fees came to 141,40€, making a total of 542,40€.
It could’ve been even cheaper still if we’d not taken the night train from Zürich but it was truly worth every penny. The same is true of the Railjet Business Class upgrades.
