My two sisters and I need to travel during the day from Venice to Vienna in early May, 2013, and would like to have the tickets in hand before arriving in Italy.
Past topics on Fodor's have helped a lot, but I'm a bit nervous about the huge difference in fares and connections.
Is this right? From the OBB site, If we get the day train from Venice leaving at 9.20 am, it is actually a bus which takes us from Venezia Tronchetto to the border and then a train to Wien Meidling arriving approximately 8 hours later? And the price is Euro 29?
When we go on the Trenitalia site with the same itinerary we get a message: "invalid departure station / invalid arrival station".
When we go on the RailEurope site it indicates that a train leaves Venezia S Lucia and arrives in Wien Westbahnh after an 11 hour trip with 2 connections and costs 130 Euros for a "Best Second Class" - reservation included.
Is it a no-brainer for us to book the bus/train journey through OBB or am I missing something important here?
Day bus/train Venice to Vienna question - am I missing something?
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If you want to search schedules, bahn.de is the best website. Typically, you have to purchase from the departing country, but Trenitalia doesn't sell this online. It says the bus connection must be bought in Italy. I can get it to show up on Trenitalia (you are probably spelling Vienna wrong).
Ve. Mestre
09:40 Villach Hbf
12:50 09:20
Travel with train change
Autobus
EC830 Image
Villach Hbf
13:16 Wien Westbf
19:00
Bildungsmessen.at
691
There is also a bus that departs at 11:40.
>>>Is it a no-brainer for us to book the bus/train journey through OBB or am I missing something important here?<<<
If they will e-mail a ticket (not just a code) and you don't need to pick up the actual ticket. Most of the time, for international connections, you must pick up the ticket at a station in the departure country using your code.
Trenitalia isn't very good at handling cross-border journeys.
OBB run a service called Intercitybus between Klagenfurt, Graz and Venice. It's a much more efficient way of travelling between Austria and the Veneto region than the train, though trains between Vienna and the larger Austrian towns are fine.
The prices reflect that: yours is one of those journeys that just may not make sense done entirely by train, unless you want to sit by a train window for a long time. However good buses are, I've still not found one as relaxing to read a good book in as a seat in a decent train.
You mentioned that you wanted to travel during the day, if you're not bothered about the scenery there's a night train too between Venice and Vienna, leaves at something like 9pm and takes 11hrs or so.
Thanks for responses.
@Loco2com - yes, we are aware of the night trains but we would like to travel during the day.
Update: We did travel from the Venice to Vienna via OBB which I booked online before arriving.
It was one ticket which included the bus from Tronchetto - the second bus station in Venice, to Wien Meidling. It was a really good trip - comfortable bus, great train - highly recommended.
One tip which I've seen here before but I'll repeat - the Tronchetto (pronounced tronketto) is a separate bus station to the primary one at Piazzale Roma right on the Grand Canal. You get to Tronchetto via the People Mover, an automatic train which costs 1 Euro. Tickets are provided at an automatic machine at the entrance and are easy to operate. Instructions are provided in English if you hit the British flag symbol. The people mover train runs every 7 minutes or so. Look for the big sign in English "People Mover" at the Piazzale Roma.
There is one stop on the way to Tronchetto. It's for cruise passengers, so stay on the train.
Once you exit at Tronchetto look for the bus in the 1st or 2nd bay. There is no one there to help or ask directions but there aren't many busses so you can't miss it.