OldestBabs

I recently bought round trip tickets between Krakow and Warsaw through Europe Rail. I looked through all the schedules they offered and selected an Express InterCity train (EIC) and an InterRegional (IR) train, second class seats on both. When my tickets arrived, I saw they were open tickets. They also had "osobowy" indicated on them. I called their help line and was told they didn't specify the trains I selected, since these were intercity trains and they had open seating. Today I was wandering through the Internet and found a site by the Polish rail system. It told me that I needed a reservation for the EIC train. Another call to Europe Rail revealed that reservations had to be made in-country. Now I cannot find the Polish rail web site to do more verifying. Another thing, also on the web I found a site that said "osobowy" mean the cheapest train and that it is neither EIC, which is very expensive, nor IR, which is less costly, but appears to be another type of train entirely. Do I have tickets for second class on these trains? Will I have to pay more since they are not "osobowy" trains? Does anyone know the web site for the Polish train system? Help!

Christina

Do you know Polish well? I just wondered as I had trouble and thus bought all my tickets in Germany, but I was staying there a while.

This is the official train site http://www.pkp.com.pl/

I don't think it is in English, which is why I wondered, and I don't know enough Polish to figure out what you ask on there. this is their website for express trains, but I can't get the English section to work on there, either
http://www.intercity.com.pl

I believe osobowy is just a regular train and reservations are not required, nor supplements. IR trains also do not require reservations, but there is a special tariff. Now EIC trains do have required reservations, as far as I know.

I don't know anything about Europe Rail so can't help you there. I believe this is a specialized ticket agent for poland trains (but is not the national system)
www.polrail.com

adrienne

If you go to the German train schedule and put in the date and time of your trains you will probably be able to figure out what type of train tickets you have. Another clue would be how long the journey takes. I believe the fast trains take 2 or 2.5 hours from Krakow to Warsaw.

http://www.bahn.de/i/view/USA/en/index.shtml

Sher

You can find the answer to many of your questions here:

www.europetrainsguide.com

They have a forum for train information and when I was trying to find out how to buy tickets outside of Poland they answered many of my questions.

Please post there. I cannot tell you how helpful these people are. And they answer your post almost immediately.
Good Luck.

wobbers

i agree with Sher - europetrainsguide are very helpful.
The ticket that you bought is inter regio train (the same as Osobovy) - older type of a train and roughly half an hour slower on this route than Intercity. The cost would be about 9.6 euros if bought in Poland. I expect you paid a lot more on rail europe. The most expensive ticket (2nd class) on this route is 26 euros.
I wonder why people insist on buying tickets via resellers when it really is not necessary. The trains don't sell out, OK on internet you can get a better price but not always and not on all trains, but even if purchased on the day, it will still be cheaper than a company like rail europe.

Sher

wobbers. I think the reason I wanted to buy my ticket ahead of time is that we will barely be in Krakow three days. We arrive on a Wednesday by air in the morning and will leave on Friday night to Budapest. I would like to get a two person sleeper and I do not feel confident that the lead time is enough to get a space.
I will not use Rail Europe as I priced this ticket and I think they want something like $200 when an advance ticket, if I could get, it would be about E49.
But europetrainsguide is advising not to use an outside agency for a purchase. So I think I will have to take my chances.