On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:00:13 -0500, nowhere@nobody.com wrote:

I find that rather surprising. I've tried on several occasions to
justify the cost of adult passes compared to single
point-to-point fares. The only way I've been able to do it is by
using those high fares shown on sites like Eurailpass, and then
only if I plan to spend most of my time on trains.

There are so many "deals" on rail fares in Europe and those fares
on the websites are only the full-price fares. They seem to be
chosen to make the passes look good.

We did use a family Eurailpass once about a dozen years ago,
first class, naturally. We used the pass from Brussels to
Copenhagen to Stockholm to Helsinki (it provided a lower cost on
the ferry) and some travel within Finland, and then the reverse.

I bought the pass after using the Eurail web fares to calculate
the savings. Afterward, using realistic fares, I concluded we
could have done the trip quite a bit cheaper using point-to-point
tickets. It was nice traveling first class, though, and since it
was my first time in Europe it did smooth out the ticket purchase
problem.

I've not bought a Eurailpass since; first class is nice, but not
that nice. I did once buy a German BahnCard50, which at the time
gave me and the rest of my family a 50%% discount on DeutscheBahn.
Even then, it turned out that on a few regional trips, such as
Munich-Garmisch, there were even cheaper regional tickets, which
the station agent at the Munich Hauptbahnhof was kind enough to
point out.