2026-08-24 14:59 UTC
The joys of booking European train tickets: travel from Delft to Rzeszow edition.
Look up tickets on bahn.de: well 23h of uninterrupted trains seems excessive, how about we make a stop in Berlin?Actually I heard there’s a sleeper train to Berlin, let’s check it out!Oh the only place I can book it is in europeansleeper.eu, fine I guess.Sleeper train only goes on specific days of the week. Well there’s one on Friday, then we can stay one day+night in Berlin before continuing to Rzeszow, perfect!For the way back there’s a sleeper on Sunday night, that works as well.Great, I have tickets for the sleeper, now let’s get the tickets from Berlin to Rzeszow!Uh oh: “Unfortunately, a reservation is not possible for this connection. Due to compulsory reservation, a booking is therefore not possible. Please choose another connection.” WTF?Let me try the Polish railway instead. What’s the website? Oh here’s polishtrains.eu, that looks plausible.[after entering a whole bunch of information, just before payment] “Attention! The carrier’s tariff conditions have changed. Please check the details before purchasing.”Ok sure, I’ll check the changed conditions. Let me pay now.“Attention! The carrier’s tariff conditions have changed. Please check the details before purchasing.”WTF?“Attention! The carrier’s tariff conditions have changed. Please check the details before purchasing.”Searches the internetOk so I need to book the tickets on intercity.pl instead of polishtrains.eu? Of course, silly me.Well this website is not very well translated, but I’ll manage.I cannot buy a return ticket but need to buy two separate tickets, how annoying.[after buying the outbound ticket] “No offers fulfil the criteria.”Uhm hello I can see you have a train scheduled for this day, I would like to buy a ticket please?“You are purchasing a ticket well in advance. The departure station and time, as well as the arrival station and time, may change.”Well I guess that means I’ll just have to try again next week, I guess?So the current status is that I spent too much time on this and have 3/4ths of my trip booked.
#Train #Railway #PublicTransport #EuropeanSleeper #EuropeByRail
Replies (1)
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@mei@donotsta.re 2026-08-24 15:05
@jesper@agda.club Polish domestic trains usually open booking 30 days before departure. Not sure off the top of my head what the booking horizon is for international ones, but it could be 60 days. Do feel free to say hi if you'd like some help, I happen to remember a ridiculous amount of information about European train travel and I'm always willing to help out :3