How far in advance do tickets on Czech Railways become available near the yearly timetable change?

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The Man in Seat 61 is a good resource for updates on booking windows. I checked his news archives, and found the following in the November 2016 update:

Hungary, Czech Republic, Renfe etc... Expect these to open late November or even early December, based on previous years' performance.

Unfortunately there's no way around this that I know of. The Austrians are likely to open their bookings earlier than the Czechs, but if the Czechs are operating the service that probably won't help you even if you try to go through the Austrian site.

Upvote:0

I'm writing from the Czech Republic. For regular trains (not sleeping cars) you can ALWAYS buy a train ticket on the day of departure without any problems. If I were you - I would just walk up to the ticket window in Zurich half an hour before departure and buy the ticket then.

Alternately, you could buy a ticket from Zurich to the border point (there is always a point on the border - either a real town/village or made up town just for the purpose of the train travel between countries)...and then find the person checking the tickets on the train and they will sell you a ticket on the train for the same price (with maybe an extra fee of just 1 Euro).

Either way will work. I travel on trains a lot and I would do option #1. Good luck! :-)

Upvote:4

The relevant information from the always excellent Man in Seat 61: https://www.seat61.com/Europe-when-do-train-bookings-open.htm :

Many central & eastern European countries still open ticket sales 2 months ahead, such as [...] Czech Republic [...]. Although the Czech Republic now manages 90 days on key international routes.

And [...] Czech Railways often don't open bookings for dates after that mid-December Saturday until late November or even early December, so the 60 or 90 days shrinks to as little as 10 days! But don't worry, no-one else can book either, the train won't sell out, and you'll still see cheap tickets when booking opens.

So the best advice is to keep checking twice a week or so. The tickets won't sell out that fast, so you're certain to get a place and probably even a cheap ticket.

There are companies that can do this checking for you, such as Treinreiswinkel and (I think) Loco2. Information about those can be found elsewhere on the Seat61 site.

So don't worry, you're certain to get the train ticket, and can book your accommodation now already.

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