OK, take a very deep breath.

I have seen some messed up stuff when booking -wide rail in my time, but this one takes some beating.

It shows pretty much *everything* that's wrong. Take note @AdinaValean @BLiberadzki @CER_railways!

A friend in Brussels - @eszterz - asked me if I could help her book a Brussels-Budapest train ticket, travelling daytime.

Working out what trains you could take is not *too* hard.

You either start on 0625 DB ICE from Bruxelles Midi, and change at Frankfurt Flughafen and München Hbf, or you start on 0823 DB ICE from Bruxelles and change at Frankfurt Flughafen and Wien Hbf.

For the rest of the thread I will call these the 0625 route and the 0823 route.

There's a little headache right at the start - a bunch of trains terminate at Kelenföld in Budapest, not at Keleti station where these services usually stop. DB's timetable does not explain what's going on (engineering works I presume?) - you have to work this stuff out.

But if you know Kelenföld is in Budapest you are OK.

The real : how do you book either connection?

For the 0625 route, Deutsche Bahn gives you a price - 99 Euro, Sparpreis (book ahead, non-refundable) for the whole trip.

The problem? You get to the screen to actually pay... and it then says only paper tickets are possible for the route.

8 days shipping time and a 6 Euro surcharge for that... and the trip is not very far in the future. So that's no good.

Paper tickets? Still?

But

The trains for that connection are a DB ICE Bruxelles-Frankfurt, a DB ICE Frankfurt-München, and a ÖBB RailJet München-Budapest, and all of those have eTicket systems...

So split the ticket?

DB can sell you an eTicket for Bruxelles-Frankfurt-München for 80 Euro. Simple.

But what about München-Budapest? That's an ÖBB train that runs

Open up 3 browser tabs...

DB can book the München-Budapest RailJet for 60 Euro, with an eTicket

ÖBB can book the München-Budapest RailJet for 142 Euro, with an eTicket

MÁV Start can book the München-Budapest RailJet for 39 Euro, with NO eTicket!

Yes, you read that right.

Tickets for *the same train* on *the same day* range in price between 39 Euro and 142 Euro, depending which website you use.

Yes, the ÖBB ticket is flexible, but still. This is

But back to the complete trip...

2 x eTicket, Berlin-Frankfurt-München + München-Budapest (with DB) comes to 140 Euro. 40 Euro EXTRA for the privilege of eTickets...

So who could do better?

Trainline cannot even give a price for the connection

Astoundingly SNCB International gives a price, *and* can issue an eTicket - but they levy a hefty €18 surcharge for seat reservations. Normally this would be €4.50 for DB and €3 for the RailJet...

So that's our solution for 0625 departure - book an eTicket with SNCB International, and stomach a surcharge.

But what about the 0823 option?

This one is DB ICE Bruxelles-Frankfurt, DB ICE Frankfurt-Wien, and a "D-Zug" Wien-Budapest (the train's destination is Bucharest)

Deutsche Bahn cannot give a ticket price for the whole route - because DB has no price for the Wien-Budapest part

ÖBB can give no price for the whole route - because for whatever reason it gives no price for the Bruxelles-Frankfurt part

And MÁV can't issue eTickets, so

So... ticket split!

Book Bruxelles-Wien with DB - 120 Euro with an eTicket, and book Wien-Budapest with ÖBB - 20 Euro with an eTicket

The same price as the 0625 option with the ticket split

This case shows *everything* that's wrong...
- wildly varying prices
- impossible to book connections in one go
- poor eTicketing options
- poor information about timetable changes

Because I am committed to these sorts of things I invested more than an hour to work all of this out. Most people would simply not bother, and would hop on a instead.

If wants people to travel sustainably, this stuff needs fixing!

FAO @AnnaDeparnay @ibuscke @elba013 @seatsixtyone @joshposaner @nickabrooks @psettembri @barvdwalle @andreasgraf @xyzmichael @McWhirterAlex

/ends