Eurail Pass - Is it really worth it?
 

I will be travelling in Central Europe for two months. The countries I'm visiting are Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Germany and France. Is it worth getting a Eurail pass when most of these countries are not on the Eurail system?

Quite possibly not.

If you know what specific journeys you will be taking, you can use railsaver.com to compute whether a pass is a good buy for you.

Also, comsider buying the Selectpass. You could just have the 4 countries that are members of Eurail system (France,Germany,Austria,Hungary). You could pick 5,6,8,10 traveling days in a 2 month period. So every time you want to take a long journey into one of the countries above, all you would need is to buy a ticket to the border station and transfer to the Eurail train.

www.eurail.com

Take a look at the Prague excursion pass on raileurope.com - - it's one of the really good deals they offer (in my biased opinion). It allows you to enter the CR from anywhere to go to Prague, then depart Prague to go to any neigboring country, all for one low price. I'm guessing that it is subsidized by the Czech government to get North Americans to include Prague on their travel plans.

If your plans include at least 17 days in a stretch (especially in France and Germany) where it would be useful to have a car, then you might want to consider the Peugeot lease program. From autoeurope.com and other sources.

Best wishes,

Rex

I suspect that the lease option mentioned by Rex would be worthwhile only for two or more persons. I also think that Renault tends to be cheaper than Peugeot and that with a brand new car, the comparative worthiness of the car brand is not very important. Both Peugeot and Renault allow you to pick up the car in various German locations, but that adds to the cost of the buy/sell plan. There is no charge for picking up and returning a car in France.

I don't drive;)

Any rail pass and its value is simply a matter of math. Exactly how many different times do you plan to travel, and in which countries? There's no way to answer without knowing how many individual tickets you'd be buying, the cost of them vs. any of the different rail pass options.

The math, yes--but also convenience. A railpass gives you the flexibility to get on and off whenever you like and, if you're over 25, it's first class so you always have plenty of room.

I did the railpass and loved it. I was 30 at the time and did enjoy the room in first class(especially on the nice germans trains) but I always got funny looks because I looked like a grungy kid with a backpack. If you are doing a backpacking-like stint, it's hard to get your money's worth on that first class railpass because you often meet backpackers that have to ride 2nd, and you end up joining them.

The freedom of it is wonderful...I was supposed to go for 2 months and ended up staying for four. Nothing went according to plan and being able to jump on and off those trains at will was a whole lot of fun.

But, if you really plan on going to the countries you are going to, it may not be worth it. As others have said, if you have a firm itinerary, you can do the math.

In the Czech Republic, if you plan to do a lot of train travel within the country, get a Karta Zet (my spelling may be off). You will need a passport picture and they give you a laminated card. It is good for substantial discounts and should pay itself off with a few trips.

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