Introducing www.mavcsoport.hu

If you want to buy cheap online tickets for trains within Hungary and from Budapest to cities in neighbouring countries such as Vienna, Prague, Bratislava, Krakow, Warsaw, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Belgrade or Bucharest - the Hungarian Railways (MAV) website www.mavcsoport.hu is the place.  No overseas ticketing agency has yet connected to MAV's ticketing system, so these cheap fares are only available direct from MAV.  They are not available from any other source, neither by phone nor online from any of the usual ticketing agencies.

MAV's new booking website at jegy.mav.hu is now live

www.mavcsoport.hu now sends you to jegy.mav.hu to buy tickets.  This all-new booking website went 'live' in Beta on 13 December 2020.  Here's a run-down of its features and quirks.  Hopefully some of these quirks will be ironed out in the next few weeks or months, if you spot that something has been fixed, please let me know!

• When first launched, the system showed incorrect train times, it added or subtracted hours based on your own time zone.

  When it was first launched, the MAV website picked up your own time zone from your computer's internal clock and adjusted all the train times it showed by the same number of hours.  So a train that left at 19:10 Hungarian time was incorrectly shown as leaving at 18:10 when viewed on my own laptop here in the UK (1 hour behind Hungarian time), or 13:10 when viewed on a PC located in New York (6 hours behind Hungarian time).  They fixed this in March 2021, but the problem was back in June 2021.  They fixed it again in August 2021 so it should now be OK.  But I flag it up here just in case it comes back.  The train times you see on the MAV website should correspond with the times I show on seat61.com.

• Booking opens 3 months ahead on most routes

  If you look further ahead than 3 months, on some routes you'll see no trains, but beware, on other routes you'll only see expensive full-flex standard fares as the cheap advance-purchase fares are only loaded 3 months ahead, sometime less than this.

  Let that sink in:  Suppose you're impatient to get every last 50-mile journey in your Grand European Tour booked and paid for way in advance.  You try to book a Budapest-Vienna ticket 5 months ahead, you only see €54 tickets, you worry all the cheapies have already sold out (like, as if!) and pay a whopping €216 for your family of four.  Had you simply waited, fares from €13 would have appeared 3 months before departure.  Many such cheap fares remain available weeks or even days ahead.  Don't be impatient!

  Bookings from Poland and a few other routes may only open 60 days ahead.

• When paying, enter your country as Egyesült Királyság.

  United Kingdom in Hungarian is Egyesült Királyság, so start typing Eg and select that.  Germany = Németország, Italy = Olaszország, Netherlands = Hollandia.  Many counties outside Europe aren't recognised, so here's the easy workaround:

  Simply start typing Eg and select Egyesült Királyság regardless of your actual country of residence.  It makes absolutely no difference to the booking or payment, heaven knows why they bother asking, just typical nonsense you have to do to get it to work.

• You now get a print-at-home or show-on-app ticket

  You can now show your ticket in the MAV app on your phone (all routes) or (for some routes only) print it out, a big improvement over having to collect hard-copy tickets from a MAV ticket machine in Hungary.

• Now sells inwards tickets TO Budapest, but only from certain countries

  As tickets can now be shown in the MAV app, it's now possible to book 'inwards' tickets to Budapest, but only from certain countries.  For example, you can now book from Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Bucharest, Warsaw, Zagreb or Ljubljana to Budapest.  But although it also shows inwards tickets available from Krakow to Budapest, when you click to book it the reservation always produces an error message - I hope they fix this soon.  By all means try.

• May or may not be able to book couchettes or sleepers

  They've added the ability to select couchettes & sleepers (initially there wasn't even an option to select them), booking them now works for couchettes & sleepers on some routes, it might not work on all routes.  Try it and see.

  If you have any problems booking couchettes or sleepers on the MAV website, book the night trains between Budapest and Munich, Zurich or Berlin at www.thetrainline.com (easy to use, in €, £ or $, overseas credit cards no problem, small booking fee) or the Austrian Railways website www.oebb.at (more fiddly, same prices, in €).  Book night trains to or from Romania at the Romanian Railways site bileteinternationale.cfrcalatori.ro.

• The site only sells limited-availability cheap advance-purchase fares, it cannot sell full-flex fares & doesn't show all trains ...  Unlike other train operator websites which show all trains with cheap fares if available and regular fares as well, MAV's site only sells special cheap limited-availability advance-purchase fares and only shows trains on which such fares are available.

  So if a train isn't shown in the MAV website search results, it doesn't mean the train doesn't exist, nor does it mean the train is 'full', it just means there are no cheap deals left on that train in the MAV ticketing system.  You can still buy a full-flex ticket at the ticket office, and you might be able to buy a cheap fare from a website linked to another operator's ticketing system.

  For example, trains between Budapest & Vienna are run jointly by Hungarian Railways (MAV) and Austrian Railways (ÖBB).  Each operator sells tickets using its own ticketing system, controlling advance-purchase price buckets separately and independently.  So if a particular train is missing from the search results on jegy.mav.hu because there are no cheap fares left for it in the MAV ticketing system, you might still find a cheap fare for that train (or can buy a full-price full-flex ticket for it) at www.thetrainline.com or www.oebb.at, which connect to the ÖBB ticketing system.

  For the same reason, prices differ between jegy.mav.hu and www.thetrainline.com/www.oebb.at:  A given train might be €19 on jegy.mav.hu but €29 on www.thetrainline.com or www.oebb.at, or the other way around (but the Hungarians are usually cheaper!).

• Zagreb or Ljubljana:  When first launched, it didn't recognise the city names Zagreb or Ljubljana so you couldn't book to those cities.  But now it does, so Budapest to Ljubljana or Zagreb is no problem, at least in the outward direction.

• Berlin: If you book to or from BERLIN it books you to/from Berlin Sudkreuz, not Berlin Hbf (the main station).  If you specifically select Berlin Hbf it finds no trains.  However, I dare say you'd be fine booking to Berlin Sudkreuz and getting off at Berlin Hbf, it's the same price.

• Munich:  For Munich you must type München Hbf even in the English version if the site.

• Bucharest:  For Bucharest you must type Bucuresti even in the English version if the site.

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