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Comment by 0b0001 | Hacker News Reader

Even with the current train connections, it would be a great improvement to book a single ticket for multi-country journeys.

Right now, I need a ticket for Germany, France and Spain to get to Barcelona. If any of the trains runs late and I miss a train, I'd have to buy a new ticket for the connecting train.

So a single booking agency with guaranteed connecting trains would be great.

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Within the EU Rail team network, missed connections are largely covered:

http://www.railteam.eu/en/for-your-journey/network-map/

Unfortunately the network seems to be mostly Belgium, France German, the Netherlands, with egress into Italy, Spain and the UK.

I thought you could buy tickets from Germany to e.g. Barcelona with Deutsche Bahn? The "only" problems are that one needs to visit a physical office of theirs as online booking is not possible and you may pay a lot more than buying individual cheap tickets with the operators.

TGV tickets are sold there, but separately - without any liability for missed connections.

I thought EU Rail Team sorted out the missed connections issue? Germany through France to Spain should be covered.

There’s at least some single ticketing in Europe - we bought a ticket from the UK to the south of Germany this summer & it was a single ticket changing in Brussels and Frankfurt, with automatic carry over for missed connections caused by train delays.

DB is quite good at these through tickets to and from Germany, though it seems to be underutilised. A few months ago I booked a through ticket, with missed connections protected, from London to Berlin (Eurostar + Thalys + DB ICE) for €70, the day before departure.

At the DB counter or online? The website never shows prices for me. The DB assistants couldn't tell me why -- yet, within the next month, the booking will be available online /only/ :-)

I've only ever booked online. It always shows prices for me...

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