Zagreb Travel Forum

Found limited information on it so far...

1) Whats the cost?
2) I hear its just normal seats at the moment, is this likely to change?
3) Is it safe to get some sleep on?

Regards

Ben

As usual, the Croatian Railways website is of no help when looking for such "specialized" and "specific" information like the price and the type of the train.

According to the local railfan forum train 399 consists of two 2nd class cars and one couchette car. One way ticket costs 194 kn (26 Eur), return 311 kn (42 Eur) and the couchette supplement costs 10 Eur.

The train changes locomotives three times, takes almost an hour to cross the border, stops at every crossing and somehow manages to make this journey last 9,5 hours. (Back in the 1980s the same journey lasted a bit over 6 hours).

The train is so unpopular that even pickpockets won't stay awake for the night because of the 20 passengers in three cars.

does this mean i should be looking at a coach instead? Couchette sounds fine for me and my mate.

We ideally want to start in Sarajevo but flights are expensive from london so was thinking fly zagreb then travel during the night, have been to zagreb before.

- benfc, you also may find that if you arrive to Croatia early before going to Bosnia or if ATOC British office sells Italian Global Price tickets as they should do, the Zagreb-Venice "Smart Price" train ticket (7 day advance purchase) is a mere 15 Euro. There are more and cheaper airplane connections from Venice to London than from Zagreb, so I would see Zagreb during the day than in the evening go to Venice, arriving there in the morning. Venice-London should be no problem with "no-frills" airlines.

- the "regular" (non-advance) train ticket from Dobova to Venice is 25 Euro, while Zagreb->Dobova is AFAIK 3.2 Euro, so reaching Venice from Zagreb is no more than ca. 28 Euro.
The regular Zagreb->Venice ticket is 40 Euro. Sounds pretty silly, for 20-something km difference on the SAME train the price difference between going from Dobova and from Zagreb is 15 Euro, while using the regular pricing it's 3.2 Euro. You can combine the regular international ticket (3.2 Euro) and Italian "global price" ticket (25 Euro) on the same train.


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The following long essay is more for Croatian VT members than for "benfc" (except, I found also few daytime trains).

Thanks Niksa for the great info. That confirms a lot and helps to determine the correct prices between Croatia and BiH. I found the Croatian Rail web site not THAT bad, but I suspected, their info is not 100% correct - and you proved it.

The link to the discounts is here, but they are not complete: the base (one-way) CRO-SLO, CRO-SRB, CRO-BiH 30% discount is not mentioned - who knows, why?

http://www.hznet.hr/iSite3/Default.aspx?sec=97 (we see only round-trips).

It is, however, mentioned on ZRS web site: http://www.zrs-rs.com/povlastice_m1.php

Let's see, what www.jizdenka.cz will do for us. According it the "regular" international tariff (TCV) the regular fare is 36.80 Euro. 30% off gives us 25.76 Euro. Since Euro<-->Kuna exchange rate set by railway is an average rate not banking daly rate - that corresponds to 194 Kuna.

For return tickets it's 20% off from the Croatia-BiH RVC, not an additional 20% from TCV. In our case it's giving us a multiplier of 0.8 * 0.7 = 0.56 off the TCV regular fare. Indeed, 73.60 * 0.56 will be 41.20 and it seems like Croatian Railway set a bit worse rate than the average, so 311 Kuna is very likely.

Thanks a lot for the info, this proves how the tariff between BiH and Croatia does work.

There is a little trick for cost-sensitive people, they can save an earth-shaking amount of 3 Euro:

a) Buy in Sarajevo a Sarajevo->Volinja ticket "there" and Volinja->Dobrljin ticket "back".
The total price: 0.56 * (27.80 + 1.40) = 16.35 Euro

b) Buy a Dobrljin->Zagreb ticket "there" and Volinja->Dobrljin ticket "back".
The total price: 0.56 * (10.40 + 1.40) = 06.61 Euro

The total: 16.35 + 6.61 = 22.96 Euro or roughly 23 Euro.

There is, however a daytime train also. I wasn't there but I red the scenery is nice.

Here is what I got from HAFAS (German database):

a)
Sarajevo dep. 07:14, arrives Strizivojna-Vrpolje at 12:25 (this train has the cars to Budapest)
Strizivojna-Vrpolje departs at 13:02, arrives Zagreb 15:57. This train goes a different route so the price will be somewhat different, the base TCV price is 17.60 + 25.20 = 42.80 instead of 36.80 Euro (same 30% and 30%/20% discount scheme would apply). So it would be 30 Euro one-way for people who don't play tricks and 0.56 * (18.20+2) + 0.56 * (26.60+2) = 27.33 Euro for khm.... tricky ones.

b) Sarajevo dep. 10:27, arrives Zagreb 19:47 (that goes via Doboj-Banja Luka like the night train)

c) Sarajevo dep. 21:20, arrives Zagreb 06:43

Now - for the case a) there is one more possibility. I did "cut" the ticket across the Modricha-Slavonski Samac border. According http://www.hznet.hr the domestic price from Slavonski Samac to Zagreb is 102.60 Kn in fast train or 13.75 Euro, so essentially by NOT buying the ticket all the way only to Slavonski Samac would cost 0.56 * (18.20+2) + 13.75 = 25.23 Euro.

You may pass this little trick to CRO and BiH railway forum members.

It works, by the way, best between Zagreb and Budapest: the round-trip is roughly 28 Euro, but "normally" a one-way is 35.40 Euro. Most people who need a one-way ticket just would buy a round-trip. However, a bit more "nasty" is:

Zagreb-Gyékényes-Koprivnica round-trip is 0.4 * (11 + 2.60) = 5.44 Euro
Koprivnica-Budapest + Gyékényes-Koprivnica is 0.4 * (27 + 2.60) = 11.84 Euro
Total: 17.28 Euro, saving over 10 Euros.