Prepare for summer train travel! Photo by hiddeneurope

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries in Berlin—It’s that time of year, Cheapos. The time when various European railway administrations launch a deluge of summer specials. So what’s making the top of the list this year? Read on for a list of rail companies that are slashing prices.

TGV

First up? Those deeply discounted offerings from the French Railways (SNCF) on their TGV services. Between now and August 23rd, first-class fares on many routes across France have been slashed to as little as €30 one way. Look for the TGV Prems Vente Flash fares on the dedicated SNCF website.

Thalys

Thalys is also offering regular summer first class specials, again on sale until August 23rd, for services linking Paris with Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne. With August being a light month for business travel, there are often heaps of empty seats on TGV and Thalys first-class carriages, and so these summer deals give budget travelers the chance to trade up to a spot of unaccustomed luxury! For more info, visit Thalys’ web site.

Deutsche Bahn

Deutsche Bahn launches a new ticket this week that—for travelers in no great rush—looks like a superb deal. The Quer-durchs-Land Ticket (QdLT) is a weekday equivalent of the long standing Schönes-Wochenende Ticket (SWT), which allows unlimited travel in Germany on all but the fastest trains on either a Saturday or a Sunday. Now QdLT will offer a similar option from Monday through Friday. Stipulations include no travel before 9 AM, but for long hops on slower trains,  QdLT can be fantastic value. Okay, so you can’t use the slick express services, but the slower trains bring other benefits – a chance to enjoy the passing countryside at a less hectic pace.

Cologne to Heidelberg, for example, takes less than five hours by regional train on a route that includes the Rhine valley line from Bonn via Koblenz to Mainz, in our view hugely better than the route used by the fastest express trains. QdLT is utterly flexible. No need to state your destination, no need to pre-book. And the basic fare of €34 is good for solo travel, then add on €5 for each extra traveler up to a maximum of five in all (for €54).

Happy traveling, Cheapos.

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine.

Popularity: 11% [?]

A Deutsche Bahn train in Berlin's main station. Photo by hidden europe.

By Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries—

Okay, we’ve said it before, but we’ll gladly say it again. Have Cheapos realised just how much rail fares in Europe can vary according to where you purchase your tickets?

We took a day out from our regular work with hidden europe magazine last week and conjured up a tempting palette of trips criss-crossing the continent. And then we compared the ticket prices on a national rail website (that of the Deutsche Bahn) with the prices offered for those journeys by rail ticketing agents based in Britain and North America. We took care to ensure that the tickets we purchased were in every case for exactly the same trains.

So a straight comparison, comparing like-with-like. Same class of travel, same comfy seat, same scenery slipping by outside the window – for all five routes in our basket of European rail trips.

The five routes we tested

1. Berlin to London single (by day, depart after 9:00 AM, any route) on September 3: one adult, 2nd class.
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg single (by day, no more than one change of train) on July 14: one adult, 1st class.
3. London to Cologne via Brussels single (depart at 8:00 AM or later) on September 10: one adult, 2nd class.
4. Berlin to Zagreb single via Hamburg (2 night stop) and Munich (2 night stop) on August 20: one adult, any class.
5. Nuremberg to Dresden same day return (direct trains only) on June 20 for a family of five, 2nd class.

For each of these five journeys, we thought that the German Railways (viz. Deutsche Bahn) website at www.bahn.de would offer some reasonable fare advice, and so it did. Indeed, all five journeys could be booked online through their website.

Then we turned to agents selling rail tickets in North America and Britain to get quotes for precisely the same journeys. This was done first by online research, often followed up by telephone calls to check precise details.

The results

And guess what? The leading agencies specializing in European rail tickets always charged at least twice as much as would the Deutsche Bahn for exactly the same journey.

The key point here is that in most of Europe, rail operators have a whole raft of special promotional fares that massively undercut the regular tariffs (often with discount of more than 80% on the standard fare). But agents rarely offer those discounted fares, preferring to safeguard their hefty commission fees by selling only the full fare.

Comparing the fares

Now take a look at how those fares compared. Listed below are the Deutsche Bahn (DB) fares that were available for purchase around midday of Friday, June 12, 2009 followed by the cheapest fare quoted the same day by a leading North American or British agent (all sterling and dollar fares have been converted to euros just to make things clearer).

1. Berlin to London (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €209
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg (1st class) DB: €79 / Agent Fare: €255
3. London to Cologne (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €106
4. Berlin to Zagreb with stops in Hamburg and Munich (2nd class) DB: €29 / Agent Fare: €322
5. Nuremberg to Dresden day return for family of 5 (2nd class) DB: €37 / Agent Fare: €705

Helpful advice?

We found one leading British agent who was extremely helpful on the phone, going to some lengths to suggest that for certain routes it might be wiser to get the tickets from a German source (but declining to give the specific name of the company or website).

A well-known North American agent emphasized that their dollar fares on offer would undercut anything we might purchase in Europe – a claim which is patently undermined by the results of our survey. The North American agent suggested that a rail pass might be a better bet for some of our journeys, and hinted that we would encounter a range of problems if we attempted to purchase directly from the Deutsche Bahn website.

Booking tickets in advance

The reality is that booking train tickets on www.bahn.de is pretty easy, even without a knowledge of German. The site has a decent English language interface, though in some instances you will find additional functionality on the German language website.

Also, it really helps to have a good knowledge of European patterns of service and railway geography. A good place to start is by studying the latest edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable and the same company’s Rail Map of Europe.

Booking well in advance is often the key to finding cheap fares, but our research found that plenty of discounted promotional fares are still available for travel this summer. And we did not cast around trying to dig up the cheapest possible travel dates, having fixed our palette of routes and travel dates before embarking on our research. If you would like the see the full results of our survey, just click here.

And, oh yes, just in case you were wondering, we were paid not a cent by the Deutsche Bahn to publish this!

About the authors: Susanne Kries and Nicky Gardner are regular contributors to EuroCheapo and together edit hidden europe magazine. They live in Berlin.

Popularity: 40% [?]