That Croatians raised a modest cheer at midnight last Sunday was perhaps the greatest surprise of the week. Croatia smiled and fireworks brightened the skies over Zagreb to mark the moment when the country became the 28th member of the EU.

Snubbed by Merkel

In fact, the crowds had been out in Zagreb much of Sunday afternoon and evening. There’s nothing like a good party to mark acceptance as member of a club worth joining. The great and the good from across Europe were invited to come to Zagreb and share Croatia’s moment in the limelight.

Most gave their various excuses. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yes, but then changed her mind at the last moment. This left a conspicuously empty space at the top table. German attitudes towards Croatia have cooled since autumn 1991 when Berlin and Bonn moved a little too quickly to recognize the fledgling state when it declared independence from Yugoslavia — so upping the stakes, some said, in Croatia’s vicious spat with neighboring Serbia.

Signing up to the European project

In the absence of Merkel, journalist turned diplomat Vladimir Drobnjak, who led the Croatian team negotiating with Brussels, was left to hold the fort. By all accounts Drobnjak did a grand job talking up the EU project as the accession hour approached. Folk in the square, ordinary citizens of Zagreb who have traveled in by tram from the suburbs to be part of the magic moment, politely applauded. And there was genuine good spirit.

Past or future?

But was that joy born of excitement at joining the EU? It was perhaps more a sense of relief that Croatia could now eventually lay to rest a few ghosts. In a quarter of a century, Croatia has reinvented itself. But the path of change has been a rocky one.

One by one key political figures have been sidelined by allegations of war crimes or corruption. For example Ivo Sanader, who served as Prime Minister of Croatia from 2003 to 2009, fled the country amid accusations of war profiteering. He was arrested in Austria and sent back home to stand trial. Last fall he was sentenced to ten years for taking backhanders from an Austrian bank.

Croatians hope that accession to the EU closes a troubled chapter in national history. But that does not necessary equate with unqualified enthusiasm for the great European project. Just after Easter this year, Croatians had the chance to elect twelve members of the European Parliament. Here was a chance for Croatians to help shape a better, brighter future for their country. Just a fifth of the electorate bothered to vote. To be exact: 20.8%.

The post Croatia becomes the 28th member of the European Union appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

The Eurolines network

The most convenient network of services for travelers looking to travel around Europe by coach is coordinated by Eurolines. This is not one company but a strong alliance of coach operators who coordinates their timetables and provide integrated ticketing for international journeys across Europe. This gives a continent-wide brand for marketing purposes and allows passengers to plan complicated itineraries that criss-cross Europe.

There are of course many long distance coach services in Europe that are not part of the Eurolines network. For example the Czech company Student Agency runs some two dozen routes from their hub in Prague. PolskiBus has a network of eight routes from Warsaw, the fledglng company’s growing network now also serving Vienna, Berlin, Bratislava and Prague. There are many itineraries where these non-Eurolines operators precisely fill a gap, but for its Europe-wide reach to over 500 cities, Eurolines has no serious rival.

Useful long-distance links

Eurolines does offer some intriguingly long routes. For example, service 350 operates thrice weekly direct from Amsterdam to Lisbon (“Lisboa” in Portuguese), a 36-hour journey that connects two cities some 1,500 miles apart. Even longer direct routes link cities in western Germany with provincial centers in the Russian Federation.

Good for shorter hops too

The Eurolines network thus often steps in with a convenient direct link on a routing that would require several changes of train. With Eurolines, you can board a bus in Switzerland and travel directly to Macedonia or Moldova.

But such long hauls may not be for everyone. And we find that Eurolines-affiliated services are also perfect for shorter hops, particularly in those parts of Europe where rail services are sparse. For example, comfortable long-distance coaches, most of them operating under the Eurolines umbrella, are far better than trains for journeys between the capitals of the Baltic States: Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius.

And there are times where it is just fun to travel by road for a change. There are several Eurolines coaches each day from London to Paris and other French cities. While most Eurolines schedules from London to France use the Eurotunel vehicle shuttle service, some are routed via the P&O Ferries link from Dover to Calais – always a great way to cross the Channel. And with return fares for the London to Paris run starting at just £39, the coach option can make good sense for budget travelers.

Book online

Bookings can be made online for most journeys, usually on the website of the Eurolines affiliate in your country of departure. But that does NOT mean that you need to know which particular company flies the Eurolines flag in each country. The organization maintains an excellent web portal, where you can click on the country of departure to be redirected to the relevant national site.

Here are some sample travel times (with the travel time of the fastest direct train shown for comparison):

• Brussels to Zürich: 9h 45m by Eurolines (train 8h 19m)
• Berlin to Prague: 4h 30m by Eurolines (train 4h 30m)
• Zagreb to Munich: 8h by Eurolines (train 8h 25m)
• Copenhagen to Stockholm: 9h 45m by Eurolines (train 4h 20m)
• Paris to Amsterdam: 8h by Eurolines (train 3h 19m)
• Vienna to Budapest: 2h 55m by Eurolines (train 2h 55m)

National partners

Although Eurolines coach services are principally intended for international journeys, in many countries you can also use Eurolines services for domestic journeys that cross no international borders. And many of the participating companies in the Eurolines family also have comprehensive national networks which allow you to switch seamlessly from international to national services.

For example the UK participant in Eurolines is National Express. And you can use the National Express website to book a through journey from many provincial spots around Britain to the continent. A single ticket (for example Manchester to Paris) covers travel on a National Express coach to London where you connect onto an onward Eurolines service for the continent.

More on Eurolines

Now that we’ve introduced Eurolines coach journeys, it’s time to take a little closer at their fares. Read our next post on Eurolines passes, with some tips on getting the best deals, and see how a coach pass can allow you to roam at will across Europe on Eurolines services.

Rail pass options

Interested in seeing a full list of rail pass options? Visit our booking partner, Rail Europe, to compare rates, destinations covered and see their latest promotions.

The post Eurolines: International coach journeys in Europe appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

We took a day out from our regular work with hidden europe magazine last week and conjured up a tempting palette of trips criss-crossing the continent. And then we compared the ticket prices on a national rail website (that of the Deutsche Bahn) with the prices offered for those journeys by rail ticketing agents based in Britain and North America. We took care to ensure that the tickets we purchased were in every case for exactly the same trains.

So a straight comparison, comparing like-with-like. Same class of travel, same comfy seat, same scenery slipping by outside the window – for all five routes in our basket of European rail trips.

The five routes we tested
1. Berlin to London single (by day, depart after 9:00 AM, any route) on September 3: one adult, 2nd class.
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg single (by day, no more than one change of train) on July 14: one adult, 1st class.
3. London to Cologne via Brussels single (depart at 8:00 AM or later) on September 10: one adult, 2nd class.
4. Berlin to Zagreb single via Hamburg (2 night stop) and Munich (2 night stop) on August 20: one adult, any class.
5. Nuremberg to Dresden same day return (direct trains only) on June 20 for a family of five, 2nd class.

For each of these five journeys, we thought that the German Railways (viz. Deutsche Bahn) website at www.bahn.de would offer some reasonable fare advice, and so it did. Indeed, all five journeys could be booked online through their website.

Then we turned to agents selling rail tickets in North America and Britain to get quotes for precisely the same journeys. This was done first by online research, often followed up by telephone calls to check precise details.

The results

And guess what? The leading agencies specializing in European rail tickets always charged at least twice as much as would the Deutsche Bahn for exactly the same journey.

The key point here is that in most of Europe, rail operators have a whole raft of special promotional fares that massively undercut the regular tariffs (often with discount of more than 80% on the standard fare). But agents rarely offer those discounted fares, preferring to safeguard their hefty commission fees by selling only the full fare.

Comparing the fares

Now take a look at how those fares compared. Listed below are the Deutsche Bahn (DB) fares that were available for purchase around midday of Friday, June 12, 2009 followed by the cheapest fare quoted the same day by a leading North American or British agent (all sterling and dollar fares have been converted to euros just to make things clearer).

1. Berlin to London (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €209
2. Amsterdam to Salzburg (1st class) DB: €79 / Agent Fare: €255
3. London to Cologne (2nd class) DB: €49 / Agent Fare: €106
4. Berlin to Zagreb with stops in Hamburg and Munich (2nd class) DB: €29 / Agent Fare: €322
5. Nuremberg to Dresden day return for family of 5 (2nd class) DB: €37 / Agent Fare: €705

Helpful advice?

We found one leading British agent who was extremely helpful on the phone, going to some lengths to suggest that for certain routes it might be wiser to get the tickets from a German source (but declining to give the specific name of the company or website).

A well-known North American agent emphasized that their dollar fares on offer would undercut anything we might purchase in Europe – a claim which is patently undermined by the results of our survey. The North American agent suggested that a rail pass might be a better bet for some of our journeys, and hinted that we would encounter a range of problems if we attempted to purchase directly from the Deutsche Bahn website.

Booking tickets in advance

The reality is that booking train tickets on www.bahn.de is pretty easy, even without a knowledge of German. The site has a decent English language interface, though in some instances you will find additional functionality on the German language website.

Also, it really helps to have a good knowledge of European patterns of service and railway geography. A good place to start is by studying the latest edition of the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable and the same company’s Rail Map of Europe.

Booking well in advance is often the key to finding cheap fares, but our research found that plenty of discounted promotional fares are still available for travel this summer. And we did not cast around trying to dig up the cheapest possible travel dates, having fixed our palette of routes and travel dates before embarking on our research. If you would like the see the full results of our survey, just click here.

And, oh yes, just in case you were wondering, we were paid not a cent by the Deutsche Bahn to publish this!

The post European Rail Tickets: Deutsche Bahn fares better than rail agents appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.