Holidays to Switzerland Travel Podcast Episode 69 Transcript

How to choose the best Swiss rail pass for your trip

You can see the full show notes and listen to this episode > here.

Announcer

Are you dreaming of visiting Switzerland? Planning a trip to Switzerland is very exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. How do you choose which are the many scenic cities, towns, and villages to visit? Which mountaintop excursions should you take? And what’s the best way to get around Switzerland? And of course, how much of the country can you realistically see within your time frame? If you’ve asked yourself any of these questions, this is the podcast for you. This is the Holidays to Switzerland Travel podcast. And in each episode, your host, Carolyn Schönafinger, chats with Swiss travel experts to answer your most commonly asked questions, provide practical tips and take you on a virtual visit to the most popular destinations, and of course, some hidden gems to help you plan your dream trip to Switzerland. You’ll hear plenty of conversations about Swiss cheese and chocolate, too. Are you ready to plan your trip to Switzerland? Well, let’s get started.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Grüezi, and welcome to episode 69 of the podcast. It’s great to have your company, and I’m thrilled to be able to share my Swiss travel tips and experiences, and my love of Switzerland with you, whether you are planning your first visit or your 15th. Switzerland is such an easy country to travel around by public transport. For many visitors, exploring the country by train is one of the highlights of their trip. The integrated timetables of trains, buses, boats, and mountain railways make getting around the country simple. But what’s not so simple is knowing whether or not it’s best to buy a Swiss rail pass. If so, which Swiss rail pass should you buy? This is by far the most frequently asked question in the Switzerland Travel Planning Facebook group. It’s also a question that my friend and fellow podcaster, Amanda Kendle, asked me recently. Amanda is planning a trip to Switzerland to visit relatives, and as an avid lover of train travel, she’s keen to see the country by rail. Just like many other travellers, though, she’s finding it difficult navigating her way through the various rail pass options and knowing which one to buy. So when Amanda asked me to help her choose the right rail pass, I was more than happy to help.

Carolyn Schönafinger

And this episode is one with a twist. Amanda is asking me the questions rather than the other way around. Before we hear from Amanda, I’d like to say a huge A huge thanks to the folks from Switzerland Tourism for sponsoring the podcast. For loads of inspiration and tips to help you plan your Swiss vacation, visit their website, myswitzerland.com. If you need a natural trophy, you need Switzerland. Now, without further ado, let’s welcome Amanda. Welcome to the podcast, Amanda. Thank you so much for coming on, and it’s great to have a chat with me today. Before we get started, would you like to introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about what you do and about your link to Switzerland.

Amanda Kendle

Definitely. I run the Thoughtful Travel podcast, and I’m completely travel obsessed, and I do have a particular connexion to Switzerland. In fact, it’s my ex-husband’s connection, but we’ve got an ongoing connection to my son’s cousins and aunties and nephews who all live in Switzerland, in particular in Basel. When I lived in I lived in Germany for a few years, and we used to pop down to weekends in Basel very frequently, and that really led me to love Switzerland. Of course, there’s a lot to love. I also have to say I’m a chocolate lover, and therefore Switzerland’s my country.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Absolutely. I love how when you’re living in Europe, you can just pop over to another country for a weekend. 

Amanda Kendle

I know. I miss that. Can’t do that from Perth.

Carolyn Schönafinger

You’re living in Perth, Australia, where it’s so far from even the other major cities in Australia. It’s a real contrast, isn’t it?

Amanda Kendle

It’s so is. I’ve really, really missed that. Absolutely. When we’d go to stay with our family in Basel, we would just pop back into Germany for dinner and things like that because it was just over the border. You can’t do that here.

Carolyn Schönafinger

No, definitely not. All right. I know you’ve been thinking about taking another trip back to Switzerland, and I know you love train travel because you’re very into sustainable travel, which is fantastic. You did mention to me that when you were starting to look at all the different options with the rail passes, that it was just super confusing. How about you hit me up with the questions that you’ve got?

Amanda Kendle

I’ve got lots of questions. In fact, we had a 2020 plan to spend a few weeks in Switzerland for my son’s first white Christmas. And 2020, you can obviously imagine how that went. We have not got there yet. We’ve got three years of pent-up Swiss energy, I suppose. So I’m very keen at some stage, as soon as possible to get back there for a while. But yeah, as you say, train travel is totally my thing. Because I wanted this time to not just go and see our family in Basel, but actually show my son a lot of Switzerland. The rail passes were a little bit confusing. There seems to be a lot of them. And of course, I know that you know way more about this than me. So how do I figure out which would be the right rail pass?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Well, yeah. It’s just the question that I get asked so frequently. People email me, people, members of a Facebook group, just constantly, this is the one question that is really quite overwhelming because there’s just so many options. So I’ll just give you this a bit of a rule of thumb that I use for people to get started thinking about which passes might be the best for them. And so I’ll just run through some of these things to consider. If you’re planning to travel around much of Switzerland, and or you want to go on any of the premium panoramic trains, which are like the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express, then it’s probably the best idea to consider a Swiss Travel Pass. If you’re going to be staying in a particular region for much of the time, so like the Jungfrau region or the Berner Oberland region, there are two regional passes there to think about. So they’re the Jungfrau Travel Pass and the Berner Oberland Pass. And then there’s a similar one for around the Lake Lucerne area, which is known as the Tell Pass.

Amanda Kendle

But that’s not all. So this is why I’m confused.

Carolyn Schönafinger

That’s right. There’s also a couple of other passes. So there’s one called the Swiss Half Fare Card. And this is a bit different in that you buy the Swiss Half Fare Card for a month, and that entitles you to get travel on trains, mountain, railways, cable cars, et cetera, for 50 % off. So the other passes that we talked about pretty much cover your transport to a degree. But we’ll get to that later.

Amanda Kendle

There’s always more. Yeah.

Carolyn Schönafinger

But with the Half Fare Card, you’re buying a card that entitles you to then buy additional tickets at half price. The final one that we’re going to talk about, which is probably one that you’ve heard of, and that’s the Eurail Pass. I think in the UK, it’s called the Inter-Rail Pass. You might have heard of people going Interrailing or Eurailing. And it’s basically, for Switzerland, there’s not a Swiss Eurail Pass, but the Eurail Global Pass does include Switzerland. So if you’re going to be visiting Switzerland and Germany or France, Italy, et cetera, then maybe a Eurail Global Pass is the best thing. If you have a bit of an idea of which part of Switzerland you want to visit, or if you want to visit the whole of the country, or Switzerland and other countries, that’s the first step in working out which pass is the right one for you.

Amanda Kendle

Okay, so that makes some sense. I have Eurailed before, and in fact, I did Eurail into Switzerland, but we were in Germany, France, maybe Austria and Switzerland. I can’t remember. It’s a few years back, but we did do some Eurailing. Okay, that makes sense. I think I was keeping track, there’s six, am I right, six different passes?

Carolyn Schönafinger

There’s six major passes.

Amanda Kendle

Okay, all right. This is a lot. How How do I go about figuring out, really, which is the best one for my trip? Even if I’ve got my itinerary, what do I do from there?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Well, maybe it might help, actually, before I answer that, if I just tell you a bit about what each of the passes cover. Because they all cover slightly different things, aside from the area that they cover. The Swiss Travel Pass is like a hop on hop off ticket for the whole country. It covers free travel on all the public transport in Switzerland, not just trains. So when I say public transport, that’s buses, it’s trams, it’s even boats in some cases. So people that live by one of the lakes in Switzerland might travel to work by boat. So it’s regarded as public transport. So that’s all included with the Swiss Travel Pass. And you just hop on and hop off as you like. With the Swiss Swiss Travel Pass, you also get 50 % off most of the mountain excursions as well. And it’s available all year round. So whenever time of year you travel, you can buy the Swiss Travel Pass. With the Swiss Half Fare Card, it covers the whole country as well. So you get your 50 % off all those things that I just mentioned, buses, boats, trains, trams, mountain railways, etc.

Carolyn Schönafinger

So the same area of validity, which is the whole country, But rather than just being a hop on hop off ticket that you’ve already bought, you’ve actually got to buy your tickets for each individual trip. But at half price. But at half price, that’s right. Okay, got it. Okay. And then with the regional passes, so obviously, they just cover a particular region. They cover public transport in that particular region, as well as certain mountain excursions. And they each differ depending on which pass it is. So you really need to know which mountain excursions you want to do in that region to determine which pass is the best one for you. It is very confusing, I know. And the other one that we discussed before is the Eurail Pass. Again, it covers you for the trains across Europe. If you have the Eurail Global Pass, it covers you for most trains in Switzerland. There’s a couple of regional regional trains that it doesn’t cover, but most trains, so the intercity trains, et cetera, are all covered. And with the Eurail Global Pass, you get 25 % off most of the mountain excursions.

Amanda Kendle

Okay, not bad. All right. So basically, I’m hearing already that I need to have a fairly good itinerary before I can figure out which pass is going to work for me.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Exactly. And I have a bit of a four-step process So I guess, to work out which pass is best. So first up, like you say, you need to have a pretty good idea of your itinerary. The way I recommend people do that is just to make a list of all the places or all the trips you the mountain rides or whatever that they think, yes, that’s a must see or a must do. I’ve got to do that. And then maybe have another list of, if I’ve got time or if it’s in the right area, a nice to do list. And then I just get out a map and I just mark where all those places are. And so I might mark all the must dos in red and the nice to do’s in blue. And then just by visualising where they are, that really gives me an idea of, okay, am I going all over the country or am I focusing just on one particular region? So that’s the first step. Then by doing that, you can then eliminate some of the passes that aren’t going to work for you. So if you’re travelling in winter for example, the Jungfrau Travel Pass and the Berner Oberland Pass aren’t available in winter.

Carolyn Schönafinger

So you can get rid of them off your list straight away. If you’re not going anywhere near Lucerne, you can probably get rid of the Tell Pass as well. You know where you’re going, and then you can start to eliminate a couple of passes. So once you’ve eliminated, you then are left with a list of maybe two or three. And okay, so they’re the ones you’re going to compare. But now comes the really time consuming bit. So now you’re going to have to write down all those trips that you’re going to do, find the prices for all of those trips, and then work out what discount you get, if any, with each of the passes that you’ve got remaining to consider. For instance, just on the excursion to the Jungfraujoch, which is one of Switzerland’s most famous mountain excursions. It is beautiful. If you just went and bought a regular ticket at the train station, you’re going to pay around 240 Swiss franc return just for that one excursion. If you had the Half Fare Card, well, you’ll get 50 % off. But if you have the Swiss Travel Pass, you’ll get 25 % off.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Then if you had the Jungfrau Travel Pass and you’re travelling in summer, you pay a supplement of 75 Swiss franc.

Amanda Kendle

Only?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Only, yeah.

Amanda Kendle

Okay, got it.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Or you had the Berner Oberland Pass, you pay a supplement of 99 Swiss franc.

Amanda Kendle

They could have made that the same just to help, couldn’t they? They could have.

Carolyn Schönafinger

You can see there are just so many options. What you really need to do is once you’ve got the list of all those trips that you want to do, even like your intercity travel, set up a bit of a spreadsheet and have a column for the regular ticket price, what the price is with each of the different rail passes that you’re considering. Then you can come up with a bit of a tally and see which one is going to be the most economical for you.

Amanda Kendle

I’m not a very good detailed planner, so this is sounding scary, but I love numbers and spreadsheets, so probably I could do it.

Carolyn Schönafinger

I’m sure you could. You just got to put the right amount of time aside.

Amanda Kendle

Yes, exactly. Planning and daydreaming is definitely half the fun. Say, I wanted to do this, where do I find the prices for each of these individual rides or mountain excursions, et cetera?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Well, the best place to start really is the Swiss Federal Railways website, which is sbb.ch. It does come up in English if you open it in Chrome, at least. Or they have their own app, which is SBB Mobile. So once you enter the trip you want to do, like your start point, your end point, and then it’ll bring up the price for you. For mountain… It actually does show the prices for most of the mountain excursions as well, or you can go on to the individual website for each mountain excursion. So jungfrau.ch for the Jungfraujoch and the Schilthorn. Each mountain basically has its own website, and it’ll have the prices for the cable car or the mountain railway or the mode of transport to get there.

Amanda Kendle

Okay. This does sound quite time It’s very time consuming, though, and I suspect you might have an easier way.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It is very time consuming. I have, yeah, working on, often get asked questions. I’ve helped other people to work out which is the best rail pass for And it really is just so time consuming. I thought there’s got to be a better way. So for the past probably a year or so, I’ve been working on what I’ve called a rail pass comparison calculator, which is It’s a bit of a mouthful, but it’s basically a digital calculator, which has got more than 100 different rail trips and more than 30 mountain excursion prices all preloaded into the sheet. And then you just from a drop down box, select which trip you want to add to your itinerary, and it all automatically populates the price for that trip using all the different rail passes. Then once you’ve input your whole itinerary, you can then select two or three rail passes to compare. It’ll add in the price of that rail pass and then give you the grand total. So right there in front of you, you I’ve got all the different prices automatically tallied up for you. Pick a winner. Exactly.

Amanda Kendle

That sounds much easier. I need that calculator.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Yeah, well, it definitely is time consuming trying to do it manually. Now, having said that, so as part of this calculator, there is a blank sheet. So what comes with the calculator is all those prices listed as well. So if people prefer to actually manually put it onto a blank spreadsheet and hit the numbers into a calculator themselves, that comes with it as well. Even just a seven-day trip in Switzerland, you could be doing more than a dozen different train rides and mountain excursions and so on. So if If you’ve got to go to individual websites to check all that, it does take a long time. So that’s why I thought, yeah, there’s got to be something better. And fortunately, the prices really only change generally once a year. Once a year, I will go in and update all the prices so that the data is always accurate.

Amanda Kendle

That’s handy. That’s not like daily changes or anything annoying. All right. Say I have done all this, used a calculator, picked a winner, and I’ve decided which rail pass is going to be the one that works for me. Then what do I do? Where do I get it? Is it an online? How do I do this?

Carolyn Schönafinger

There’s a couple of options. All of the passes are available to buy in Switzerland. You can wait until you get there and just buy them at a local station. They don’t sell out.

Amanda Kendle

There’s no limit in some countries?

Carolyn Schönafinger

No, there’s no limit to the number. There’s no problem there. You can definitely wait and buy it when you get to Switzerland, or you can buy it online. Now, the prices are always the same. It’s a set price. It’s no cheaper if you wait till you get there, or it’s no cheaper if you buy it six months in advance.

Amanda Kendle

Switzerland’s so fair, so neutral.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It is. Having said that occasionally There is a sale on the Swiss Travel Pass. Well, generally speaking, the prices of the passes are the same. I like to buy it online before I go, just because it’s a pretty big chunk of your holiday costs. So by buying it in advance, I know, okay, that expense is out of the road. That’s already covered. And then the other thing, too, is when you get to Switzerland, do you really want to go and line up at a railway station where it can be pretty busy, and wait in a queue to buy a pass?

Amanda Kendle

Or you might want to use it immediately from the airport, right?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Exactly. If you’ve got a Swiss Travel Pass, you can just use the pass and you’re straight into the city because you’ve already got your ticket.

Amanda Kendle

It would be heaps easier. Okay. If you get it online, what format does it come in?

Carolyn Schönafinger

Well, everything’s digital these days, so you’ll get an email PDF. Some of them have an option, like with a QR code, so you can add that to the wallet on your phone. Otherwise, you can just take a screenshot to show the conductor when he comes around. I always recommend that people take a printed copy as well, just because sometimes in Switzerland, you’re on a train, you might be going through a mountain in a tunnel just when the conductor comes around to check your ticket and his WiFi signal drops out. So showing you your phone is no good or your battery to go flat as well. So if you’ve got that printed copy, it’s just a good backup to have.

Amanda Kendle

Okay, so I get to Switzerland, got my pass, and I’m ready to go. What do I need to do? Do I need to… Some of these passes in other countries, you need to make bookings, or how does it all work? What do I do?

Carolyn Schönafinger

It’s pretty easy in Switzerland, really. There’s actually only two trains that you must have seat reservations on, and they are the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express. Any other train, you can just hop on and sit anywhere. So if you’ve got a first class rail pass, you can just sit anywhere in first class, and likewise with second class. You don’t need to validate the passes, except for the Swiss Travel Pass Flex days. Now, I won’t run through all the info about that. I’ve got an article on holidaystoswitzerland.com about how you activate the Swiss Travel Pass Flex. But if you just have the more consecutive day Swiss Travel Pass or any of the other passes that we’ve talked about. You just show that to the conductor when he comes around, he or she comes around on the train. You might have to show your passport as well, just so they can confirm your identity card, just so they can confirm that, yes, you are the person who’s named on this rail pass. It’s so easy, as I said earlier. Most of them are just like a hop on hop off ticket. So You’ve got your pass.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It’s valid for that day. Off you go, hop on and off whatever public transport you like.

Amanda Kendle

That’s super easy. So, yeah, I can’t get that wrong. 

Carolyn Schönafinger

Probably one other thing I should mention is if you’re using your pass and you’re going on a cable car ride, when you get to the cable car station, there’s usually just a ticket office. I always just go up to the ticket office, show them my pass, and they’ll just wave me through. In some instances, there might be a turnstile that you need, you’ve got to put a ticket into the slot for the turnstile to turn. By showing them your pass, they just give you that ticket and off you go. Yeah, very easy.

Amanda Kendle

Fabulous. Okay, I think I get it. It sounds actually pretty reasonable and not overly complex now. I’m ready to go to Switzerland now. Thank you.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Fantastic. I need to hear back from you about which pass you decide on, once you’ve made that must see list in the nice to see list.

Amanda Kendle

Yes, exactly. Yeah, this is the problem, how to narrow this down, but I’ll work on that.

Carolyn Schönafinger

Thank you. Fantastic. Fantastic.

Amanda Kendle

Thanks for answering all my questions.

Carolyn Schönafinger

My pleasure. There’s certainly a lot to consider when it comes to choosing the best Swiss rail pass for your trip. So I hope I’ve been able to make the process a little bit easier for Amanda and for you. Just to summarise my four-step process for choosing the right rail pass again. Step number one, list out all the trips that you plan to take and mark their destinations on a map so that you can visualise whereabouts they are in Switzerland. Step number two, eliminate any passes that aren’t available when you are travelling or that cover an area that you won’t be visiting. Step number three, choose two or three passes that you feel are going to be the best options for you. And step number four, enter the prices of each trip using the various rail passes to find the best overall option for you. As you’ve no doubt realised, this can be very, very time consuming. So the digital calculator I’ve created is designed to help make the task of choosing the best rail pass quick and easy. The calculator is preloaded with first and second class fares for more than 100 rail journeys in Switzerland.

Carolyn Schönafinger

It’s also preloaded with the prices for more than 30 mountain excursions and all the prices for the six different rail passes that we’ve chatted about today in each duration that they come in and in both first and second class. You simply have to choose the trips that apply to your itinerary from the drop-down boxes, choose a couple of different rail passes to compare, and the calculator will crunch the numbers for you. As well as the calculator, you get a work where you can list the trips you plan to take, maps showing the validity area of each of the different passes, instructions for use, including a walkthrough video. If you’d still prefer to write down all the prices manually, there There are printable sheets included that list all those fares for the hundreds or so rail journeys, 30 mountain excursions, and the different rail pass prices. So you can print those sheets off and then just manually add them to the blank spreadsheet and tally them up yourself. If this sounds like something that would be helpful for you and you’d like to know more about the Switzerland rail pass comparison calculator, head on over to the show notes at holidaystoswitzerland.com/episode 69, where you’ll find all the details. Also in the show notes are links to my detailed articles about each of the different rail passes and where to buy them. And that article that explains how to activate a Swiss Travel Pass Flex that I mentioned when I was chatting to Amanda. If you’re listening to this episode when it goes to air in April 2023, you might be interested to know that there is a Swiss Travel Pass promotion which will run from April 15 to May 14 this year. If you buy a four-day Swiss Travel Pass, you get one free travel day. Or if you buy an eight-day Swiss Travel Pass, you’ll get two free travel days. Travel can commence any time from 15 April to 13 November 2023. The full details and the link to purchase your Swiss Travel Pass are also included in the show notes. If you’d like to connect with Amanda, you can visit her blog, notaballerina.com, or listen to her podcast, The Thoughtful Travel Podcast where you can hear a wide variety of travel stories from fellow travel addicts. Those links are in the show notes, too. Again, you can find the show notes at holidaystoswitzerland.com/episode69. Thanks so much for joining me today. Until next time. Tschüss.

Announcer

If you’d like more great resources to help you plan your dream trip to Switzerland, there are lots of ways to connect with us. Visit our website, holidaystoswitzerland.com, sign up for our monthly newsletter, or join our friendly, helpful community of past and future travellers in our Switzerland Travel Planning Group. You’ll also find the links to connect with us in the show notes for this episode. Show notes and the list of all previous episodes are available at holidaystoswitzerland.com/podcast. Don’t miss out on your fortnightly dose of Swiss Travel Inspo. Hit the subscribe button on your favourite podcast app so you never miss an episode. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating. That’s all for this edition of the Holidays to Switzerland Travel Podcast. Thanks for joining us and happy travel planning.

You can see the full show notes and listen to this episode > here.