actually reserving overnight trains
 

Ok - I've been reading all of these posts and looking through my guidebooks and I can't figure out how I actually reserve an overnight train ahead of time. We are still in the US right now. We will arrive in Prague on the June 24 and want to take the overnight train to Krakow on June 25. I can see what I want on the schedule www.bahn.de, but the site will not let me reserve the train. How do I do this?
Once I figure how I do it, then what kind of ticket do I buy? We want to be able to lie down and sleep. Is it 2nd class? 1st class? sleeper? couchette? I'm so confused. We will not have any rail passes b/c we are also trying to go alot of other countries. After Krakow, we are going to Budapest, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Vienna and then back to Prague. Any help on reserving any of those overnight trains would help too.

Thanks in advance!

Try this link to get started:

http://www.cd.cz/static/eng/onlineservices.htm

Any tips for how to do this for an overnight train from Budapest to Prague? The ELVIRA site is confusing...Thanks.

I don't know if this will help but it is something to think about..when we traveled to Italy last year I had a lot of trouble booking an overnight sleeper from Venice to Naples. I emailed the hotel in Venice we were staying at for advice and they offered to get the tickets for us. We reimbursed them when we got there. The best part was they were able to take advantage of a great sale there and I saved about 100E by having them do it.

Also, if you want to be comfortable, you want a sleeper (private compartment). It was well worth the money for comfort and privacy.