European rail travel and reserved seats

Factual Questions
1

I just reserved a round trip from Amsterdam (NL) to Münster (DE). I bought first class seats. On the outbound trip I got reserved seats. On the return trip I checked the box for reserved seats, but then it said it could not complete the request and asked if I wanted to continue without reservations.

I am trying to figure out why the return trip was different. Which one of these is it?

  1. Only a fixed number of reservations are made available. The available reservations were taken, so none were available for me. When we board the train there will still be seats for us, just not assigned seats (à la Southwest Airlines).

  2. They do not accept reservations on these trains.

  3. Hi Opal

Neither of these make sense to me since the return trip is on the same carriers, and first class is available. I am surprised that they offer first class without reservations.

Any tips?

2
  1. The available reserved seats have all been taken, so you will have to take pot luck.
3

On Japan Railways Shinkansen service, First Class and First Class Reserved were different cars, so seating of each class was explicitly limited by the capacity of the cars in question.

4

Most probably, the required number of seats were not available for reservation for the whole trip. There probably are a number of unreserved first class seats for each station to station segment, but none left unreserved for the whole run.

Looking up the connection at the Deutsche Bahn site it seems that there are very few or none (depending on dates) direct connections Münster-Amsterdam; only one train that I did see had the ‘reservation mandatory’ symbol. Typical connections entail 1-3 changes of train and > 6 intermediate stations.

On the bright side, as the site allowed you to book without reservation, that would mean that the connection does not require a reserved seat. This is the case for that vast majority of German and AFAIK also Dutch trains. Unlike in airplanes, passengers are allowed to enter as long as they physically fit in; if there is no free seat well they’ll have to stand or to sit on the floor (In the past you could also climb into the overhead luggage rack if you were slim and agile and the conductor was not in sight, but the types of rolling stock where this was possible have long been retired). In the 1990s when I was younger and did not require that much physical comfort I have often done the Stuttgart-Hamburg run in part standing, in part sitting on the vestibule floor.

Most probably you will find seats to sit in for the whole of the trip, but not adjacent ones and having to move when a section begins when that seat becomes reserved (you may even be lucky, the passenger having made the reservation being a no show - in that case you will have to wait a bit to make sure of it).

One other possibility is that the connection you chose is wholly by regional trains where reserving seats is not possible at all.

Would it be possible for you to state the date and train numbers?

5

I had both these experiences with train travel in Italy in 1990. I was in a seat from Bari that had been reserved from Rimini so I had to move/stand after that. I had to stand for hours from Bologna to Florence.

But the trips I’m asking about are first class. I can’t believe they would charge me more for a first class seat if they’re going to make me stand.

The trip is as follows. The info is in German. I do not speak German but you can probably dope out what this means. I think the third train is like a shuttle/commuter that doesn’t have a number assigned to the trips, and doesn’t offer reserved seating. The first two are the first-class seats.

Ihre Reiseverbindung und Reservierung - Einfache Fahrt am 11.05.2025

Halt Datum Zeit Gleis Produkte Reservierung / Hinweise
Münster(Westf)Hbf Enschede 11.05. 11.05. ab 15:08 an 16:27 44b RB 64 (20220)
EnschedeAmersfoort Centraal 11.05.11.05. ab 16:46an 18:08 26 IC 1762
Amersfoort Centraal Schiphol (Airport) 11.05. 11.05. ab 18:11 an 18:51 75-6

For comparison here is the outbound trip where I have reserved seats:

Ihre Reiseverbindung und Reservierung - Einfache Fahrt am 08.05.2025

Halt Datum Zeit Gleis Produkte Reservierung / Hinweise
Amsterdam CentraalRheine 08.05. 08.05. ab 10:00 an 12:24 8a4 IC 145 2 Sitzplätze, Wg. 32, Pl. 44 46, 1 Fenster, 1 Mitte, Abteil, Res.-Nr. 805460127902
Rheine Münster(Westf)Hbf 08.05. 08.05. ab 12:53 an 13:24 52 A-C RB 65 (52327)
6

Yeah, from my admittedly limited experience of traveling with Deutsche Bahn, it seems that in the trains named “IC” (Intercity), you got a valid seat reservation. “RB” OTOH stands for Regionalbahn (regional train), which usually are lesser trains on regional tracks that don’t quite have the accommodations an IC has. Welcome to German train travel. And be prepared for delays.

ETA: I wouldn’t be worried about not getting seats in first class in “RB” trains. They’re usually commuter trains where the first class is not very occupied.

7

Curious - When I go to the booking process for the connection you gave (11 May, 15:08 -18:51) the Deutsche Bahn site says reservation not possible for the Dutch trains involved (IC 1762 and ICD 1862). This is also the case when I choose a date one, two or three weeks later. - so it is improbable that the reason is that all first class seats are booked.

When I go to the Nederlandse Spoorwegen site (ns.nl; they offer Dutch and English as languages) and go into the booking process for IC 1762, Enschede to Amersfort on 11 May, they do offer to sell me a 1st class fare (i.e. the train seems to have 1st class), but do not offer to sell me a seat reservation.

My working theory is that Nederlandse Spoorwegen do not offer seat reservations for domestic trains, even IC class, but only for international connections (which is the case for your outbound connection on 8 May - Amsterdam to Rheine is an international train.) This seems to be borne out by this page InterCity | Interrail train reservations | NS | railcc

A side note: your return connection is cutting it mighty fine with 3 minutes to change at Amersfoort. If you need to catch a plane at Schiphol you run a significant risk of missing it. I do not know about the punctuality of the two Dutch trains involved. but the trip beginning with a German train is ominous to me. We Germans have considered Deutsche Bahn punctuality a national disgrace for more than a decade by now. If the members of the board of German Railways were Japanese they’d long since killed themselves in atonement.

8

I didn’t look at the times to make connections. Thanks for the advice. We did not want to cut it close at all so we’re going the night before the flight and staying at an airport hotel. I did not choose the individuals trains, I just picked a trip that was presented to me which included the connection. Perhaps it is optimistic to assume they wouldn’t have packaged it that way if it was a problem. I’m used to booking air travel where they won’t book a connection unless there is a minimum time for the transfer.

9

For anybody who is interested, the return trip was a clusterfuck but ended well.

First with regard to my OP, the trains on the return trip had no first class and no reserved seats. This explains why I couldn’t reserve seats, but I don’t know why they marked the trip as first class, and I don’t know if I was charged appropriately. As you will see that was the least of my worries.

The first train from Münster to Enschede was fine. It was an intercity train, two cars.

Then at Enschede it was was posted that there was a switch malfunction on the line and the trains were only going as far as Almelo. This was only about 20% of the distance to Amersfoort. We met a British traveler on the platform who said she has been traveling in this area for 30 years. She was encouraging, but she didn’t know any more than we did about how to work around the outage. She was trying to get back to England on a 21:00 ferry that night, and her chances of making the ferry were not looking good. On her advice, we all boarded the train hoping to sort it out at Almelo.

At Almelo, there was really no way for a foreigner here for the first time to figure this out. The station was small, basically like a bus stop with a snack shop, with no information desk. We did find a uniformed train employee (not sure which line she worked for) who was trying to help and spoke excellent English. There was no estimate whatsoever about when the switch would be functional; she said it could be two hours or more if we waited for a train to Amersfoort. She recommended taking a bus to Zwolle and taking a train from there to Schiphol. We left the platform for the buses and tried to figure out where that bus would be and when it would leave. In that process we met another uniformed employee who said that would take too long and we’d be better off sticking it out with the train. We returned to the platform and once again talked to the first lady. She pulled out her phone which had basically all the cheat codes for the whole game, and started routing us. So here’s how we ended up:

17:48dep. Almelo18:06arr. Mariënberg
18:16dep. Mariënberg18:38arr. Zwolle
18:46dep. Zwolle20:00arr. Schiphol

I was concerned about how that was going to work with how we were originally ticketed, but at no point on the entire trip were we asked to present our tickets. I wonder how much fare evasion there is.

Arrival at 20:00 was really not bad at all, only 1:09 late. The trip took five trains instead of three, but the time between trains wasn’t long. But the experience of trying to determine the routing was a nightmare for someone not familiar with the area or the train schedule. Trying to use Google or the train app didn’t work too well because it didn’t take into account the outage.

On top of that the first couple of trains from Almelo were really crowded, and we were each wrangling a carry-on and a suitcase. My wife could handle her own bags except for up and down stairs, so the trains involving steps were especially fun. To add to the comedy, there was a stop on each of the third and fourth trains where drunk, sweaty, rowdy football fans boarded after coming out of games, carrying their cans of Grolsch. They were good-spirited, nothing dangerous, but also not what you look for in an SRO shoulder-to-shoulder train ride.