We are hoping to take a train from Munich to Vienna on Monday morning April 14th. When I go to Rail Europe I am getting a fare around $150 or perhaps it is E150. Is there a cheaper way to do this? Can you get something like the Bayern Ticket that takes you there?

Make that Munich "To" Vienna ... bad keyboard.

www.bahn.de shows fares as low as 29 Euros.

And if you take the short amount of time to create an account on the GermanRail site they will mail you the tickets

First, get away from Rail Europe and deal directly with with either the ÖBB or the DB.

The German site is:

bahn.hafas.de

English instructions are available. I have purchased tickets directly from the Bahn site with a credit card. I got a PDF file via email which enabled me to print my own ticket on standard A4 typewriter paper using black ink.

The conductors on the trains carry hand-held scanning devices which they use to read a coded field printed on your ticket.

For verification you MUST !!! present the same credit card that you used to make the purchase.

Your BEST bet is to leave Munich at 9:27 and arrive at Vienna West at 13:38. This train requires no change in Salzburg and its travel time is the quickest between the two cities.

If you buy soon, you can get a special ticket for €29 per person.
Seat reservations are extra, but I think they are cheap and worth the price to ensure that you have a seat.

The ticket is restricted like an airplane ticket to a specific time and date, but at the price, I don't think you can complain.

That is THE reason I say get away from Rail Europe right now and never go back.

Hi Aisle Seat, I don't think Rail Europe is always the best deal - from what I understand they have a markup.

I went to the German rail site
www.bahn.de (there is a dropdown for English on the right).

I just plugged in your date and 8:00am departure. There is a direct train (no changes) at 9:27 for 74.40 Euro. There is a link to "Savings Fares" for 29 Euro. I looked at those and they look like they are limited availability. For 2nd class, there are fares for 39 Euro but there is also a 1st class fare for 39 Euro. You'll want to check out the restrictions if there are any.

I've never purchased from bahn.de but those special fares sound really good! You might want to check into it.

Have fun!

Hi AS,

See http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

Fares from 29E each way.

Only a few seats on each train are available at 29 Euro, and when they are gone, they are gone.

When I looked up this schedule for April 14 and clicked on "Check availability" It appears that all 29 Euro seats have been sold out, but some 39 Euro seats are still available.

Look again, MT

OK, I checked earlier in the day, and there are 29 Euro places available on the 7:26 departure with a change in Salzburg.

Well now that you have all done all my work for me we are changing the plan. Now they want to just g frm Salzurg t Vienna on April 13th. Any good fares there?

Hi A,

You can now look it up yourself.

For Austria there is a ticket comparable to the Bayern ticket. It's called the Einfach-Raus-Ticket. See here: http://tinyurl.com/34rfm4.

Like the Bayern ticket, you are limited to regional trains, so the travel time from Salzburg to Vienna would be over twice as long as taking a direct fast train.

To see the difference, go to www.bahn.de. First do a standard search. Then under Means of Transport do an "only local transport" search.