Eurostar tickets, like air tickets, get more expensive with time.

Edit: Clarification: Eurostar offers restricted fares which you have to book in advance, otherwise they go up in price or disappear.

Do you know if the same holds for tickets in continental Europe? I know that most British companies do that as well...

In particular...

I am travelling from Zurich to St Anton, Austria. Should I book in advance?

What about Zurich to Munich (and back)?

Should I book in advance for within CH tickets?

Do you know what companies charge flat fares? (and which ones do not?)

Oh btw, does anyone have any experience with Eurail passes? I have an EU passport and a US drivers license but I haven't lived there for 6 months... Would I be able to trick the inspectors?

If you go to Germany, you get the reduced price if you buy your
tickets 4 days out.Austria, I am not real sure.

There is also something called Railplus for the German speaking countries. Asking at SBB is the best way. This is usually for people that make
multiple trips to Germany/Austria.

Thankfully, Switzerland has possibly the simplest train ticket pricing system in Europe. Tickets for any given route at any time are always the same price, and on any train. Ah, correction, I just thought of one exception to this: There are some late night trains (between midnight and 5am) that you may have to pay a small surcharge for.

For cheap train tickets connecting Switzerland with Germany, Austria, and Italy, then the cheapest way I know of is using the "Click and Rail Europe" feature on the SBB website. I believe tickets are released 7 days prior to travel, with a limited number at very good prices. There is a restricted number of destinations and times, but just choose one close to where you want to go and get a standard ticket for the last leg if necessary.

We are looking to book tickets to France. Where do people go to find the best Internet sites for train tickets?

I have used SBB for Zurich/Paris but for anything more complicated SBB doesn't work.

Try these guys: http://www.raileurope.com/us/interna...ions/index.htm

They have different web sites depending where you are booking from. This is a shortcut that takes you directly to the advanced search function for UK reservations: http://www.raileurope.co.uk/search/s...aveldirect.asp

By the way, this site will not give all results that SBB gives, justifiably so, as SBB sometimes gives absurd results (e.g. Zurich to St Anton through Innsbruck!)

For discount tickets from Switzerland to France, there is a special section of the SBB website where you can buy them. See this page, but I'm not sure that link will work, if it doesn't then go to the SBB website, then click on the following links (all near the top-left corner of the browser): Travel -> Ticket Shop -> Trips in Europe -> TGV Switzerland-France.

I'm not a fan of the Rail Europe website, it does not seem to contain all possible times and connections. Some friends of ours were visiting from Canada and were trying to plan their trip across Europe with it. It was suggesting some pretty limited options. I gave them more info by using the national rail websites, and everything worked a lot better.