Could a native of Europe explain the Eurail ticketing system to me? As I understand it, there are different prices for Americans/others vs EU citizens. How do EU citizens buy their tickets? Eurail.com seems to not sell point to point tickets and says passes are only for non-Europeans.
Eurail does not sell tickets in Europe, as you noted. But there are a lot of discount systems there that vary by country. DeutscheBahn has a discount system that involves paying a fee up front that enables you to buy tickets at a discounted rate, up to 50% savings. You can also prepay for riding for a day, week or month and get a good discount on that. They also give generous discounts for students up to 26 years old and seniors.
I’m fairly sure every country has some setups like this to encourage use of public transport. Eurail is just more geared towards the sort of use that a tourist might have.
Eurail is the system for visitors - Europeans purchase tickets known as Interrail. Being Trash myself, I do not know much of the Eurail concept, but I spent a good part of my summer vacations bumming round Europe by Interrail. Good fun - few things are more appealing to the average teenager than starting your vacation in Denmark with no plans at all, except to make it to Paris and decide whether to go East (Italy/Greece) or West (Spain/Portugal).
You’d order the ticket at the local railroad station - there’s all sorts of zones and duration options, but I always bought the full-continent 1 month variety. (Under normal circumstances, however, my cash would run out before the full month was out. Travelling Italy - Denmark with no money is not that fun.) The rail pass is linked to your passport and you have to show both. IIRC, the card would be issued centrally and could be picked up about a week later.
The card only allows for a 50% discount in your country of residence - apart from that, you can go wherever you want. (If you want certain express trains, reservations and/or sleepers, you have to pay extra.) In my day, you could buy a variety that covered ferries as well.
Enough anecdotal stuff - here’s a link with good info: Interrail
Most people advise against buying an eurail pass, because, except if you’re riding trains very frequently and over long distances it generally ends up to be more costly than buying point to point tickets. There’s a site out there that can tell you what’s the best option depending on your itinerary. I don’t remember its name at the moment, but I could dig it up if needed. Of course, the pass is convenient, but it’s worth checking this out closely.
Similarily, point to point tickets shouldn’t be bought in the USA, but directly from the european railway companies, since they’re sold in the USA with a significant premium (it used to be something like 30%, but it might have changed with the fall of the dollar. Or might not.). Eurorail do sell these tickets (check their site more closely) and so do travel agents, though.
Also, if you check this out even more closely directly with the local railways, you can get various deals (different from country to country) further reducing the ticket’s prices (reduced fees for younger people, or for reserving well in advance, etc… in france, for instance).
Apart from that, as mentionned previously, though the Eurail pass is only sold to non-residents (AFAIK, its residency that matters, not citizenship), there’s a similar scheme for residents called Interail. I don’t know whether there’s a significant price difference between both passes.
Finally, Eurorail isn’t itself a railway company, but an affiliate of several european companies (mainly of the french SNCF) created solely for the purpose of advertizing and selling (overpriced) tickets and passes outside Europe.
Interesting. Thank you for your responses. Should be of great help when I decide on my itinerary for my trip this winter (so far its looking like 4 weeks in Europe).
My next question, which might need its own thread to get enough responses, is whether there are any online brokers selling rail tickets for middle eastern/central asia.
There are different types of Eurail tickets that still might be worth it. A co-worker of mine was there for three months and bought a travel-any-14-days-within-a-2-month-period pass that worked out pretty well.
For that reason, when I was in Germany, the rumor was that you could buy your Inter-Rail pass over the border in Luxembourg, where it was obviously more advantageous, but it didn’t work in my case. I had to go back over to Trier to buy my pass.
Here’s the site I was refering to : www.railsaver.com
Thanks.