Looking for assistance.

We are taking a train from Venice to Salzburg Friday June 20th and hoping to catch a bus to Bertchesgaden before car rental closes at 6 pm.

The Trenitalia website makes me think that there's no way we'd make it. The bahn.de site is more encouraging. Which one is more likely to be accurate? Any idea how expensive this would be? We are a family of 4, kids ages 21 and 17.

Any suggestions? I want to avoid the extra drop off charge if we were to rent in Austria and drop off in Frankfurt.

Thanks for your help.

I don't know about picking up the car in Berchtesgaden. We picked ours up in Freilassing Germany. It is a little closer to Salzburg, I think, and a very easy bus ride. We rented through Auto Europe. Another idea, you might be able to take a train into Freilassing more easily than finding a bus. Looks to me like the train station is walkable distance to the car rental place in Freilassing. (But maybe someone else knows for sure.)

If you arrive on the 3pm train you could make it easily.

Both German Rail (bahn.de) as well as Austrian Rail (oebb.at) have one (and only one) connection that will get you to Berchtesgaden before 6pm from Venice (besides possible overnight trains).

08.46 dep Venice
12.02 arr Villach
12.11 dep Villach
14.55 arr Salzburg
15.15 dep Salzburg (bus)
16.01 arr Berchtesgaden

Austrian Rail warns that the trains will probably be very busy that Friday, and strongly recommends seat reservations.

Thank you AZKathy,

Feilassing sounds like a better choice. At least their agency offers Saturday hours in case we couldn't make the Friday time limit - Bertchesgaden didn't open up again till Monday morning.

I had already booked with AutoEurope so hopefully they'll be able to accomodate the different location at no additional cost.

You're welcome. Something else we did was to stay in Salzburg the first couple of days without a car. We didn't need it in Salzburg and it saved us some money. We picked it up the day before we left and drove down to Hallstatt for the day--beautiful.

Have a great time with your kids!

Thank you AZKathy.

Even with Sunday hours, we now see a lot more flexibiity.

Cowboy1968,
I had planned to purchase the train tickets to Salzburg when we arrived in Venice of June 18th. Do you think that is taking a huge risk?

And would you suggest buying tickets one place over another? I am one of the many that seems confused by Trenitalia, but could end up issues with any site that I choose.

Would love help on this one. Definitely need to be in Salzburg on the 20th.

Yes, I bet that waiting until June 18 will cause problems to get reservations.

EURO2008, the soccer euro cup, is held in Austria (and Switzerland) this summer. There will be a quarter final on the night of June 20 in Vienna. So your train from Venice will also get many spectators going there for the match.
And: Fridays are usually busy during the vacation season anyway.

I would buy/reserve NOW.

Thank you for the heads up.

So glad that I posted!

Hopefully I'll figure this out and get it booked by this weekend.

Hi A,

www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html shows the 08:46 from Venice SL to Salzburg via Villach, but won;t sell you the tickets online.

However, you can purchase the Venice SL to Villach portion - Smart Price of 19E pp.

You will get an email confirmation. That is all you need.

www.bahn.de will sell you the Villach to Salzburg tickets for 30.6E pp.

You have plenty of time for Bahn.de to mail you the tickets.

Enjoy your visit.

Thanks Ira!

That is so much better than raileurope of $114 pp, which I was beginning to think was my only option.

These forums are wonderful!

You are welcome, Ann