Europe Travel Forum

If I book a point to point ticket via internet to travel from say Berlin to Ulm in Germany and want to stop at stations at Leipizig and Nurnberg along the way are you allowed to do this on the one ticket. a)can you get off and have a day excursion and then get back on b)can you stay overnight at Leipzig and Nurnberg and then continue on under the same ticket....or is it necessary to buy tickets to each station along the way. What ever the answer is does this apply between different countries. I am trying to work out whether point to pont tickets or a rail pass is cheaper. I also believe that you can book tickets and then pick them up at the station...is this correct. Any other info on train travel would be greatly appreciated for us first time Aussies.

I can only answer this for Germany: The one way trip, like Berlin to Ulm in your example, has to be completed within two consecutive calendar days. You can leave Berlin in the morning of day 1, get off at, say, Leipzig, spend a couple of hours there, continue to Nürnberg in the afternoon, stay overnight and continue to arrive in Ulm the evening of day 2.
If you want to spend more than one night at the in between stop you need two separate tickets.

Thanks Kathrin. I see you live close to Ulm. We have relatives there that we will be dropping in on fro a few days. We are travelling south from Berlin to Ulm and then via Munich into Austria, Switzerland, Paris and back to Frankfurt to fly back to Australia.

For international tickets there are two possibilities.
1) Normal TCV international tickets are valid for two months, with unlimited stops allowed provided you stay on the route printed on your ticket, and provided you do everything in order. So you can buy a ticket from say Vienna to Amsterdam via Prague and Berlin and spend two months visiting every place on the route.
2) Market price tickets, which are valid for a particular train on a particular day. You lose all flexibility but they are often cheaper thant Normal TCV tickets, and in some cases the only tickets available.

One advantage of buying tickets covering long routes is that the tariff is degressive. So in the above example a ticket Vienna - Prague - Berlin - Amsterdam would be cheaper than buying each section seperately.

Thanks Kathrin. I see you live close to Ulm. We have relatives there that we will be dropping in on for a few days. We are travelling south from Berlin to Ulm and then via Munich into Austria, Switzerland, Paris and back to Frankfurt to fly back to Australia.

Not that close - it's still two hours by train to Ulm from where I live. i know the city a bit, though, thanks to a project I worked on two years ago. Unfortunately my Ulm travel page is still an incomplete fragment. (Yeah, it's one of many plans among my travel pages.) You may already find some interesting things on it, though. If you like baroque architecture, check out the tips on Wiblingen monastery. The library is a jewel.

Oooops... I've done it again: Forgot that my little Aussie friend was still logged in. Of course it wasn't the wombat who worked in Ulm but his mommy!

... and it's MY travel pages that have the Ulm tips, not Russell's.