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Benjamin
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We, as complete train travel novices, are thinking of a Spring trip to Budapest to see some friends.

The Rail Europe website is pretty helpful and it seems as though a four country, five day Eurail Select Pass will be our cheapest option. We're planning Nantes/Paris/Strasbourg/Munich for the daytime part of the journey and then Munich to Budapest overnight. At the moment I'm struggling to find the type of overnight train accomodation that's available. To be honest anything less than two berth en suite is not acceptable to us. I've read somewhere that the German overnight trains can provide this but I can't seem to find any information on these.

Just to add a small complication how do you think we'll fare with Mrs Benjamin needing to use her wheelchair, although we won't need specific disabled accomodation as the chair can fold up and be stored when we're on the train.

Any tips or hints from seasoned rail travellers appreciated. Depending upon the extent of any answers we'll no doubt have more questions as the planning progresses. [:-))]

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From Deutsche Bahn English pages

 

http://www.bahn.de/international/view/en/index.shtml

You can use this to identify train times and types (I just picked a random date for Spring next year setting off late afternoon) - clicking on the type brings up specific info like this

 

 

Night trains (NZ, EN, D-Zug, UEX, CNL)

There are various types of night train
CityNightLine AG (CNL) is a company that runs trains linking a large number of cities in Germany with metropolitan centres in Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.
DB’s Urlaubsexpress (UEx) runs at holiday periods, serving the principal resorts in Austria, Croatia and Italy.

The D-Nacht (D-Nacht) service is jointly run by various railway companies and serves most countries in Eastern Europe as well as France.
DB NachtZug (NZ) serves a great number of destinations within Germany as well as some in Denmark, Belgium, France, Italy and Switzerland.

EuroNight is a service run by our counterparts in Austria, Italy, Hungary and Romania.
You can book CityNightLine directly at www.citynightline.ch, the EuroNight service run by Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) at www.oebb.at and the Berlin-Malmö night train at www.berlin-night-express.com.

 

 

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As far as DB itrself is concerned, if they have prior warning (not sure of how much) they will provide a wheelchair lift to bring a wheel chair up to the height of the carriage and so allow the person to get on the train still in their wheelchair.

 

It may be that to get 2 berths you will need to either go first class or pay a supplement for sole occupancy and the best thing would be to ask by contacting either DB or OBB directly

 

Good luck

 

Edit:  Just read the en-suite bit - I doubt if that is possible. 
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The city nightline service by DB (German Rail) from Paris-Munich leaves Paris Est c2245 arriving next morning just before 0900. Should be easy to then travel on to Budapest by direct daytime service. The following website may give an idea of this service

 http://www.seat61.com/Pop-up-nachtzug.htm

We recently travelled to Nuremburg for the Xmas market having booked our rail tickets (Thalys / ICE) through the SNCF office in Auray with no problem. Perhaps a trip to your local SNCF office may help.

Brian (again)

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Thank you for the replies.

andyh4 I've followed the link on the Austrian site and as far as I can see there doesn't appear to be an overnight sleeper service giving the accomodation we require from Munich to Budapest.

brianagain I hadn't found that train so it's one I'll look into.

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An update to my earlier information;

From 14 December new revised timetable information as follows;

"Travel from

Paris to Munich by the City Night Line sleeper train

'Cassiopeia', leaving Paris Gare de l'Est at

20:20 and arriving in Stuttgart at 04:19, Ulm at 05:42,

Augsburg at 06:33 and Munich at 07:16 next morning. 

Important:  This otherwise excellent train

runs daily in summer, but only 4 times a week in winter. 

It runs daily until 13 Dec 2008, then on Mondays, Fridays,

Saturdays & Sundays until 26 March 2009, then daily until

2 November 2009, then on Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays &

Sundays again.  This train has a sleeping-car, couchettes & seats
..."

I lifted the above from the very good "Man at seat 61" website.

Brian (again)

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