Verona - Munich - Prague trip (Spring 2019)

D6700 said:

I strongly suspect the two single fares are not exactly the same product and that your efforts wouldn't be worthwhile.

Even if you are successful, it would be something of a hollow victory, given the effort that would be required to recover less than a fiver!

Of course it was annoying, but I genuinely feel it's just something to put down to experience and to learn from. As with many purchases, it pays to do some research and to shop around.

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Well, they were charging more for a product with substantially less validity (and if there is any suggestion it's not the same thing, two singles are the same price as a Day Ranger). Plus I bought tickets for the four of us so it's a good £20 odd they chinged us out of. I'm certainly not going to take this kind of nonsense lying down - it's not as if there was a language barrier leading to a misunderstanding of any kind either, and I specifically asked whether there wasn't another cheaper ticket available.

The reason we bought in advance was that it was a tight connection (with one of our trains ending up being delayed), and we did not know whether buying onboard was possible.

As I'm not here to fight with people, I'll refrain from further reply & advice.

D6700 said:

As I'm not here to fight with people, I'll refrain from further reply & advice.

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Oh no, absolutely it's useful to hear your advice. Just hope that my cautionary tale will be useful for at least one other traveller out there!

I'm probably too late with this info for you, but the 749 hauled KZC Rakovnicky rychlik Saturdays/sundays (09.09 from Praha Hlavni) is diverted until 9 June and runs via Rudna U Prahy. This involves a long very steep climb from Smichov out of Prague to Rudna, the grumpy will be running flat out and can only be described as Hellfire! HTIOU Timetable here- http://www.kzc.cz/vlak/rakovnicky-rychlik

beermaddavep said:

I'm probably too late with this info for you, but the 749 hauled KZC Rakovnicky rychlik Saturdays/sundays (09.09 from Praha Hlavni) is diverted until 9 June and runs via Rudna U Prahy. This involves a long very steep climb from Smichov out of Prague to Rudna, the grumpy will be running flat out and can only be described as Hellfire! HTIOU Timetable here- http://www.kzc.cz/vlak/rakovnicky-rychlik

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Thanks, I'd not spotted that alteration, already planned to do it at the beginning of June so a bonus.
I presume they are doing work at Beroun station, as the line 200 services that are booked via Rudna (for pathing reasons?) are diverted off it.

cactustwirly said:

How was the Brenner Pass? Thinking about doing it sometime in June.

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If you want linesideing/photography, I can recommend getting off the local train at St Jodok and going for a wander round. Some great vantage points.

D6700 said:

€4.80 each way is the "correct" single fare offered by DB. However, the train is operated by ÖBB, who have their own range of fares for this journey. That is €2.20 single or €4.40 for a City day ticket. These are readily visible on the ÖBB booking site and were also available on the train.

If I'd been quoted €9.60 return for a 3 minute journey each way that can be walked in 17 minutes, I'd have done the latter - especially as I quite like crossing international borders on foot.

The moral of the story is that it pays to check both "sides" when making international journeys - and don't believe the (possibly once true) claims that it is always cheaper to buy from the originating country, because that is often not the case.

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I've often found that the ÖBB website is cheaper than the DB website, even for the same train!

ForTheLoveOf said:

I specifically asked whether there wasn't another cheaper ticket available.

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There probably was not at the Munich Ticket office! The 4,40€ fare is a OÖVV ("Oberösterreichischer Verkehrsverbund") day ticket for the relevant zones - but that's not avaiable from non OÖVV outlets. The fare you paid was two SCIC-NRT tariff single for Simbach/Inn - Braunau/Inn (or in reverse) which you should be able to get at most European ticket offices - and are usualy much more expensive. However they can be discounted, unlike most Verkehrsverbund fares.

It also works the other way around: If you were to travel on a regional or local train between Düsseldorf and Dortmund, a VRR single (offered by bahn.de but not at TVMs and offices outside the VRR area) is 15,70€, what ÖBB offers is the 27,80€ international tariff (intrestingly, an ICE Flexpreis is only 25,50€ on bahn.de).

It can pay off to check such oddities, especially as you can not get all tickets everywhere in Germany (imagine it like not being able to buy a travelcard outside the zones).

Spoorslag '70 said:

There probably was not at the Munich Ticket office! The 4,40€ fare is a OÖVV ("Oberösterreichischer Verkehrsverbund") day ticket for the relevant zones - but that's not avaiable from non OÖVV outlets. The fare you paid was two SCIC-NRT tariff single for Simbach/Inn - Braunau/Inn (or in reverse) which you should be able to get at most European ticket offices - and are usualy much more expensive. However they can be discounted, unlike most Verkehrsverbund fares.

It also works the other way around: If you were to travel on a regional or local train between Düsseldorf and Dortmund, a VRR single (offered by bahn.de but not at TVMs and offices outside the VRR area) is 15,70€, what ÖBB offers is the 27,80€ international tariff (intrestingly, an ICE Flexpreis is only 25,50€ on bahn.de).

It can pay off to check such oddities, especially as you can not get all tickets everywhere in Germany (imagine it like not being able to buy a travelcard outside the zones).

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Was very poor form of them not to advise us of where I could get a cheaper ticket, in this case. Perhaps I'm spoilt at being able to buy a ticket from Carlisle to Gretna Green at the same price regardless of whether I buy it in England or Scotland!

ForTheLoveOf said:

Was very poor form of them not to advise us of where I could get a cheaper ticket, in this case. Perhaps I'm spoilt at being able to buy a ticket from Carlisle to Gretna Green at the same price regardless of whether I buy it in England or Scotland!

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It's more like a Dundalk - Newry ticket, as Braunau is not part of the DB network, so it's entirely logical that they may not be able to offer all tickets that are available

ForTheLoveOf said:

Was very poor form of them not to advise us of where I could get a cheaper ticket, in this case. Perhaps I'm spoilt at being able to buy a ticket from Carlisle to Gretna Green at the same price regardless of whether I buy it in England or Scotland!

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They probably did not know. If they knew, I can imagine that they would have advised you. But when you enter Simbach to Braunau on a DB machine, you will just see the expensive fare and not the cheap one and thus will take it as the only one.

cactustwirly said:

It's more like a Dundalk - Newry ticket, as Braunau is not part of the DB network, so it's entirely logical that they may not be able to offer all tickets that are available

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More importantly, it is not a fare set by the railway but by a PTE-esque structure. Can you get all PTE productes from all ticket offices? I don't think so.

Spoorslag '70 said:

They probably did not know. If they knew, I can imagine that they would have advised you. But when you enter Simbach to Braunau on a DB machine, you will just see the expensive fare and not the cheap one and thus will take it as the only one.

More importantly, it is not a fare set by the railway but by a PTE-esque structure. Can you get all PTE productes from all ticket offices? I don't think so.

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Fair enough, it is not necessarily a conspiracy (and I don't think DB run any services between those stations so presumably they don't get any of the revenue anyway). But it is nevertheless poor form to sell tickets without having sufficient knowledge so as to avoid overcharging the customer - and I certainly wait with baited breath to hear what DB say to my complaint.

ForTheLoveOf said:

and I certainly wait with baited breath to hear what DB say to my complaint.

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Did you get any kind of response / refund in the end?

ooo said:

Did you get any kind of response / refund in the end?

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Last I heard he hadn't.

It was a great trip though. Overall it was much better value than doing something in the UK like the ludicrous Caledonian Sleeper (!!).

From Verona to Munich we had a 1st class compartment at the front of the train. It was a scenic and smooth journey and didn't feel as long as it was; the time passed quickly. I'd recommend people do this route on a long distance train before the by-pass tunnel(s) open.

Munich to Prague was an odd experience; we had a 1st class compartment for this too. I noticed there was a double-deck standard class coach on this train but I'm not sure if this coach went to Prague or not.

We got two trips on "Grumpy" locos on the Saturday, on two different lines. In between these we did various random trains to random places, which was interesting. It was nice to have compartment stock, and be able to have opening windows without people going on about health & safety

ooo said:

Did you get any kind of response / refund in the end?

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They stated that the fare paid had been the "correct tariff" and that the OBB fare was based on a different tariff that they do not sell.

I am inclined to try and obtain recourse through my card issuer, so we will have to see what happens there.

There are many cases of ridiculous fares being offered like that in Europe, not just in Germany.
A great example that I've found - the single fare as sold by PolRegio (Przewozy Regionalne) for the journey between Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice (7 minutes, a couple of kilometres) is 4PLN/1EUR. Or you can buy a ticket valid for the VBB bus to Poland from the station to the centre of Słubice for 1.70 EUR.

Yet the same train ticket as sold by Deutsche Bahn is an eyewatering 9.50 EUR.

Cloud Strife said:

the journey between Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice (7 minutes, a couple of kilometres)

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Earlier in this thread, I mentioned that I like to cross international borders on foot. By coincidence, I did this very journey on foot exactly a week ago! From centre to centre, this is quicker and more convenient than using the train, with the road bridge over the river, connecting the two towns. With the difference in prices, I guess a lot of Germans regularly pop across the border to eat and drink.

If you have any questions about Słubfurt (as some people call it locally...), feel free to ask - it's one of my favourite places to visit, and I've done a lot of historical research into the towns!

Yes, there's no sense in using the train for that journey. The Frankfurt (Oder) bus got extended into Poland a few years ago and has been a success, as it meant that Słubice was fully incorporated into the VBB transport system. The stop in Słubice is a strange one and largely a waste of time, because the station in Frankfurt (Oder) is actually closer to the town centre than the one in Słubice. It made some sense in 2002 when they opened it as Poland was outside the EU, but it's hard to see the sense in the station these days.

About Germans - oh yes. It led to a very funny situation here - https://www.google.pl/maps/place/Re...bfcf06eff9fc286b!8m2!3d52.350198!4d14.5599928 . I was with my friend (a lecturer at the Viadrina University in Frankfurt) and we were speaking in English. The waitress approached and spoke to us in German, and we told her "no, we speak Polish" and ordered everything in Polish. She was completely confused, then asked us why we spoke English to each other and Polish to her. So we explained that I'm from the UK and my friend is German, at which point, the waitress looked completely bewildered and asked why on earth we both spoke Polish. It turned out that it was very, very rare for Germans to speak even basic Polish there, and that we were the first non-Poles to actually use Polish reasonably well.

Of course, we decided to do a test, so we went over to Frankfurt and tried to use Polish. In the places where people spoke Polish, they were Poles - the only non-Polish person that could speak Polish was an ethnic Russian who was born in Germany to Russian parents. People didn't even speak basic Polish, not even in places where you'd reasonably expect Polish visitors like in the train station. It's quite funny for me, because while my Polish is decent, I don't speak German and can't understand much of it at all, so I'm lost there.

Thank you for that - a very interesting read.

As for the VBB transport system reference, that may help one of the previous posters get a better understanding of the background behind the tangled web that exists around local transport at international borders within the EU.

Yes, Germany has a particularly confusing system of regional transport operators that operate in a unified tariff zone, but with a fare system that can be mindblowingly complicated. The good thing is that you only need a single ticket to cover your journey regardless of the mode of transport (regional trains/trams/buses/ferries/whatever), but the bad thing is that you need to make sure that the transport operator is in the regional system. Some regional associations extend their reach beyond the borders of Germany, especially where a German train extends beyond the border. Two examples - the NEB service to Kostrzyn nad Odrą and the DB Regio service to Szczecin Głowny, but there are many more.

The problem with these regional tickets is that actually buying them can be difficult.

Indeed - I often struggle when trying to find out about short journeys over there, even without the complications of border crossings - 50 fare zones and somewhat vague maps not being uncommon!

In the case of the contentious example earlier in the thread, I understand the local transport system with the cheaper fare was actually an Austrian one that extended into Germany, hence the understandable lack of knowledge by rail staff away from that area.

Yes, that's also what I understood. It's a general problem with cross-border services, as some operators do a dismal job of publicising these connections abroad. Some operators (such as Koleje Dolnośląśkie and České dráhy) are very clued up about each other, but then you get some really high levels of ignorance elsewhere.

Incidentally, I've just dug up a particularly bad example from DB. The connection between Zgorzelec and Gorlitz is free on all Koleje Dolnośląskie trains, but DB actually sell a 9.30EUR ticket for this journey! It gets even worse when you choose longer journeys - DB sell a ticket from Gorlitz to Wrocław Główny for 24.30EUR. KD sell a ticket from Zgorzelec to Wrocław on the same service for 27.10PLN, so 4 times cheaper.