Brindisi Travel Forum

I will be staying in Ugento in June. We have a rental car which we can return to the airport in Brindisi. Does anyone have info re: 1. How far is the train station from the airport? 2. Can we take a cab from the airport to the train station? 3. Is there a closer train station from Ugento? 4. How do we get the train tickets, do we buy them there or can we get them in advance? I've tried Rail Europe and they knew nothing!!! HELP!!!!!

1. Just eyeballing it on www.viamichelin.com - maybe 2 to 4 kilometers, depending on where the airport entrance is?

2. I am sure you can. Taxis will always be at airports and (most) trains stations.

3. Lecce is closer, but I don't know that it has much of an airport.

4. Unless you must get on a particular train, there's probably not much reason to get the train tickets for Brindisi to Naples before you get to Ugento. While you are in Ugento, you can go over to Presicce or Racale one day (a few kilometers away) and get the tickets there.

5. We know much more than RailEurope....partially because we don't let not knowing anything stop us from telling you all sorts of stuff anyway ;-)


P.S. there is a bus from the airport to the train station in Brindisi (as there is in most Italian cities). The info is at http://www.seap-puglia.it/default.asp?idlingua=2&idContenuto=454 but is all in Italian. Look below
"SOCIETA' TRASPORTI PUBBLICI S.p.A.
BRINDISI C.da Piccoli – Zona Industriale"
because the first table is for a bus between the airport to/from Lecce. If you look farther on down at the "Useful Stops" (Fermate Utili), "FF.S" refers to the train station.

However, the airport looks so close that a taxi may make more sense with luggage and multiple passengers...

Bill

>5. We know much more than RailEurope....partially
> because we don't let not knowing anything stop us
> from telling you all sorts of stuff anyway ;-)

haha :-) Hope I won't confuse them, but at least I have some info about Italian train tariff

OK, #1,

The "magic" web site of European tarif (international tarif - in countries like Spain, Italy and France difficult to use, but still giving some info) is this:

http://www.jizdenka.cz/(S(y5tdyvq4axf4lh3a0jlxpr3u))/IT.aspx

I am sure, Rail Europe doe not have a slightest clout how to use it and they do not know about it's existence anyway. This is the starting point of ANY rail travel in the area between PyongYang and Casablanca. Jizdenka is our "God" we worship. :-)

So Jizdenka tells me: Brindisi-->Napoli Centale is 33 Euro and 388 tarif-kilometre. This is the price of International, so-called "TCV" ticket. Now, such tickets are not extremely useful in Italy on short distance, only if it is a huge one and I want to use trains without obligatory reservation. However, it will give me an idea, how much will be the ticket price on "global-priced" = "better" train.

#2 I am looking for the schedule. Italian web site is rather confusing, I am going to use HAFAS database. No, Not HAMAS. It's HAFAS :-)

http://www.hafas.de/hafas_e/index.shtml

All you need is to click on "Germany passengers" (don't worry, it's not just Germany - some trains even in North Korea are there, and certainly most of Italy).

You will get this:

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

It's also useful to know, Naples = Napoli.

Good news: We got some connections.
Bad news: There seem to be no direct train. HAFAS is not 100% so it means rather "unlikely there is a direct train" tan "no train", but we should assume the worst.

We got a connection departing 08:55, arriving Taranto 9:52 and connecting train departing Taranto 10:05, arriving Napoli Centrale 14:42.

It sounds good, but it well may happen, you will miss the train in Taranto because it's too tight connection for Italy.

In any case, going to Taranto does not seem to be a bad idea: the next suggested connection (EuroStar Italia departing 12:39 with changing trains at Caserta) is still too tiight for Italy: 20 minutes, so the third seem to be winning: departing Brindisi with local train to Taranto at 13:05, arriving Taranto at 14:08, departing Taranto at 15:15, arriving Napoli Centrale 19:24.

Sounds good, but there is a catch: the train departing Taranto at 15:15 is a "global price" train - it'a an IC with obligatory reservation.

I was chastised by a VT member recently using a nionsense word "global price train" - sorry, it's not my idea, it's how they are called officially - look at the HAFAS printout, it's there. I agree, it's a silly name, but it's not my fault.

In your case you have to be of course very careful: missing a global-price train is a nightmare because the ticket is valid on that particular train only. Given that, I would try to depart Brindisi even earlier.

Re-issuing a query on HAFAS, this time only between Brindisi and Taranto we got a train previously "hidden" by HAFAS. HAFAS is not human, just a database. It does not know, in Italy you have to take a bit more generous amount of time in consideration to change trains so it gives only the closest connections. A human can force it to re-think tough :-)

We got now a train departing Brindisi at 11:52, arriving Taranto at 13:09, it's the train number R3608.
Just to make sure, there are no surprises I click on the train and it reveals a little surprise: it does NOT go on Sundays - but the one on 8:55 is a daily train.

Thus we have three trains to consider:

#R3606, departing Brindisi @08:55, arriving Taranto @09:52 <-- OK, daily, but likely late for R3468 @10:05
#R3608, departing Brindisi @11:52, arriving Taranto @13:09 <-- not on Sundays
#R3610, departing Brindisi @13:05, arriving Taranto @14:08 <-- OK, daily, but maybe be late for IC676 @15:15

I would not discuss other trains because they are either too early or too late (unless you like to go by night with sleeper).

Obvioulsly, I would "shoot" for the #R3608 (hope you do not want to return your car on Sunaday?). Even if late, it is extremely unlikely, you won't catch the IC676 at 15:15

Since one is "regular", the other is "global" train, I cannot combine the ticket, so I am using two separate.

First ticket is on a regional, slow train. It gave me from Trenitalia web site an Earth-shaking amount of 4 Euro. This is the same price you would get at the station so you do not need to book anything, just show up timely and buy the ticket from the live agent and spend 4 Euro/Person.

The second ticket is for IC plus number 676 "Jonio", departing Taranto 15:15.
The Trenitalia web site gave me 24 Euro in second class and 32.50 Euro in first class with REGULAR tarif. Given it's a quality train - still a good price. Regular tarif is everyday MAXIMUM price but you have limitation of train choice. So unless there is a major event and the train is full of soccer fans and there is not a single free chair, you should not worry. If the train is too full, you my try to get "Flexi" price (28.40 Euro in second class, 38.60 in second). May happen, that the train is sold out in "regular" on second classe, but the "regular" first for 32.40 is still open. Than just go for the first class.

If you are lucky, you can get "Sconta Smart" price - it will be 21.80 in second, 29.50 in the first. Sconto Relax is even less: 20.70 in the second, 27.90 in the first.

You can, of course play around with the Trenitalia web site and try to order the tickets from their web site, http://www.trenitalia.com/en/index.html or maybe just print out what I wrote and proceed to the station without much worry (given the low risk and the relaitvely low difference between different price buckets I would just probably proceed to the ticket counter and try to ask for the lowest = Sconto Relax

If you are certain about your times, you also can buy the ticket on-line (see the instructions in English),

One more thing - you can actually get "lucky" and avoid all "globalisation" provided you can reach the following train connection:

#R3606, departing Brindisi @08:55, arriving Taranto @09:52, continue with R3468 @10:05

Here I was able to get the through price - the most expensive was 18.10 Euro, the least expensive 15.40 Euro (big deal!)
It also reveals, Trenitalia does not use much of degressivity if I would try to get a "through" price with the IC - it merely adds the local train price to the IC price. Also, it won't let me do my job intelligently regarding the schedule "padding".

All in one: I am not impressed with global pricing. It actually "robbing" us by a few Euros one one side, on the other side both Trenitalia and the customers would benefit if the "old" international tariff would stay. At average, www.jizdenka.cz gave me a good estimate of relatively expensive variant (interational tickets) - but buying it a customer won't need to go throgh all problems with purchasing on-line, etc.

I hope, this long posting did not bore you. And I hope, you see, why this kind of job is extremely difficult. As bad (or good?) RailEurope is, they just cannot do this kind of consulting. It took me about 2 hours...

I also try to write in detail because as it seems, not many here can work with these. Also who is interested, the UIC web site with all "global price" train tarif of entire Europe can be accessed here:

http://dijszabas.uw.hu/dijszabas/index.php

(open the http://dijszabas.uw.hu/dijszabas/download.php?fname=./Marktpreise.txt file and read the URL and now to access).

Hope more people can benefit and look up the prices/schedules.