Meine CHAOS-Erfahrung mit dem Urlaubs-Express – Nachtzug-Test

Meine CHAOS-Erfahrung mit dem Urlaubs-Express – Nachtzug-Test

I have no idea which platform it’s on. If the Urlaubs-Express doesn’t work out, then I’ll have to see what kind of hotel room I can find here in Salzburg. Yes, the only option is to position myself somewhere up there and watch where it arrives and then run. There it is, there it is, there it is. Yes. Yes. Good evening. This behind me is the main train station in Salzburg, Austria, and today I’m testing out a night train service with you, namely the Urlaubs-Express night train service. I’m taking the train from here in Salzburg to Koblenz through the night today, and we’ll find out whether it’s good or bad. First of all, I’d like to talk about the booking process. In my case, I booked this train very spontaneously, but the booking process is complicated. You can book online, but it seems to me that it doesn’t happen automatically on the other side, or that automatic debits are happening. That means I book this train online, and I also pay for it, and I’ve basically already completed everything I want. And then I have to get a booking confirmation, and with this booking confirmation, I then have to transfer the money. And of course, even if I made an instant transfer, which I did, the money isn’t in their account immediately. So this morning, while I was on the train, I called them once, and then it worked, but only after I had spoken to them twice. Let me put it this way: I think the booking process is suboptimal, and in my opinion, unprofessional. But why does it have to be this way? I asked Christian Eunhausen about it. He’s from Train4U GmbH, who operate the Urlaubsexpress. Our passengers usually book very early, well in advance, because they basically link their vacation planning with ours and our trains. You can also do all this with a credit card. Uh, we’re working on that too. Uh, we were perhaps a little behind schedule at times, but in the future there will also be credit card payments when booking, a kind of paylink or something like that. And it gets dark so quickly, it’s 11 p.m. Well, around 10:30 p.m. My train leaves in 45 minutes, a quarter past 11 a.m. But we’re going in now because I definitely don’t want to miss it, and we’ll see if we know which platform it is. I have no idea which platform it’s on. In any case, there’s nothing written on it here. I’ll take a look in the DB app, because the train was shown there. There’s no platform there. It should say Düsseldorf. Yes, I’ll check all the platforms now, because luckily I still have 45 minutes, to see if there’s anyone from the Urlaubs-Express hanging around here. There are Railjets at the back. I’ll go back there now. Okay. Well, I don’t think I need to explain to anyone that this is just as unprofessional as buying tickets. [Music]
It still says here that it will arrive at 11:17 p.m. I have to say, though, that hasn’t changed since then. I’ll see if I can find some ÖBB information somewhere, if they can tell me where I should wait. So, let’s go back downstairs. Let’s look for some information. Is there anything else here? The information point. It’s closed too. Oh, it’s not on the timetable, but that doesn’t surprise me. Yes, the only option is to put it up there somewhere and watch where it arrives and then run. Of course, it couldn’t be worse. That’s the last train to Munich that would go towards Germany, apart from mine. Yes, after that, nothing else goes towards Germany. If the holiday express doesn’t work out, then I’ll have to see what kind of hotel room I can find here in Salzburg or sleep here at the train station. I have absolutely no desire for that. That’s exactly the fear I have as a customer now, when I’m sitting here thinking, yeah, maybe this is just a complete rip-off and they don’t use Salzburg, but they sold me a ticket. The DB app says it’s coming and it’s 2 minutes late. 15 past the original and 17 past the current. But that hasn’t changed in two hours, and in my opinion that means the data isn’t flowing anymore. That means it could be 5 hours late and I’m not getting any information. We’re talking about a night train, I know it from the Nightjet, which is sometimes 1,000 years late. That’s where the big trust comes in. Is it coming or not? Am I going to be stranded in Salzburg or not? I mean, a night train doesn’t just have a one-minute layover, and that means it’s probably more like 5 minutes here, I don’t know. Let’s check again to see if there’s anything on it now. Because in France, they always only say 30 seconds in advance. So, the Railjet is obviously interesting for people here in Austria, but I want the Urlaubs-Express. Oh guys, I don’t know what I’m cutting in here from here, but the information policy is so poor, it doesn’t even exist. Like, it’s not written here on the departure. Yes, it’s not even important where exactly the… which platform it is, if it hasn’t been determined yet. But it has to be there for me to believe it’s coming. So I don’t believe in anything. So I believe in possible human error, because the booking process was already completely human. Are you also looking for the Urlaubs-Express? Yes. Yes, me too. I have no idea. To Koblenz main station, right? Yes, exactly. I have no idea where it goes. There’s nothing there. Shit. But at least there are two of us. There it is. That’s it. Is it that one?
Yes. [Music] Here, right? I think the carriages are right at the front. Yes, that’s it. What else should it be? Yes. Yes. Get in. Doors close automatically. Can we get it to say that next time somewhere? Yes, it would like to continue was not displayed here, but okay. Yes, right? I’ll just close for a moment. I need to acclimatize. Luckily we’ve got it now, but it ‘s not okay that it’s not displayed. We all know that, right? Yes, 100%. It’s really crazy. I really wouldn’t know what to do until four or five. I wouldn’t have known. I, well, I should have, um, I was just there, the last train to Munich had just left, and I thought, do you take it or not? But I need some fresh air first. I feel the same way. It’s so bad. It’s really such a big deal, you should really write a complaint. Absolutely. Can you say why that is? The circumstances here were a bit special. It was the only train of the entire season that goes from Innsbruck to Düsseldorf via Salzburg. This was necessary because of the construction work in southern Germany, and normally, when we travel to Salzburg, for example on our trains to Villach, it works wonderfully. We’re advertised there at the station gates. We still don’t know exactly why it didn’t work in this case. It goes from our office in Cologne via quite a few stations until it has to appear on the display somewhere. We can only apologize. Uh, breakdown. Greetings go out to the other passenger, who I think also had to run a bit . Uh, yes, we’re sorry. Uh, something went wrong somewhere. Good morning. It’s just before 6 a.m. and I’m about to arrive in Koblenz here on the Urlaubs-Express. From what I read in reviews regarding cleanliness, yes, it could be a bit cleaner, but it’s really not that bad. It’s just an old train. So. Um, what I noticed is that in this carriage I ‘m in now, two windows are open, ever so slightly, but you can’t raise or lower them, there’s a gap there, they’re open. Um, the toilet was fully functional and actually, from my point of view, no problem at all and worked well. It wasn’t a 170 € experience, I think you can definitely say that. And what you really have to give credit to is this holiday express, is that it’s super punctual. Um, now it is… we’ve just passed through Boppard, it’s now 6:05 a.m. and according to the schedule we should be in Koblenz at 6:15 a.m. I think that’s pretty realistic considering where we are right now and it’s a pleasant change from what you usually experience, for example with Deutsche Bahn, even though it also runs on the tracks. Your next connections are the RB81 to Trier main station via Bullay. Departure at 6:25 a.m. from platform 9. I arrived in Koblenz, and I’ll try to summarize. First of all, I apologize that you didn’t see much of the compartment. That’s because I couldn’t film it because there were other people there. I tried to film a bit, but it didn’t turn out particularly well. The comfort was okay. It was a couchette seat that I had booked, and I got a couchette seat. Six people in a compartment—that’s, let’s say, the standard back then, from the time these carriages were built. It was normal back then. Um, so that’s what you can expect from something like this, and that’s what I got. There are no sockets—at least I couldn’t find any—where you could charge anything. Um, so a power bank is incredibly important, otherwise you have nothing. There’s a sheet, there are two blankets, there’s a pillow, and it was also clean. I found the couchette to be clean overall, but it could have been better. Let me put it this way: the one two or three things we deal with here in terms of cleanliness and comfort—yes, nothing that needs to be highlighted, but also not something I would say is the absolute dealbreaker. So, to sum up the experience on the train: a solid two or three, the people were nice, the employees there were friendly. Now we come to the dealbreaker, and that is the experience in Salzburg Central Station, or rather, the NO experience. Because it was as if the train didn’t exist at all. Nowhere was there even a sign that a train called the Urlaubs-Express was stopping there and that went to Germany at that time, nowhere, nothing at all. You had to have complete trust that you weren’t being ripped off. And after the experience with the booking process, having to transfer money and so on, it did occur to me that I had been massively ripped off and that there wasn’t even a train. So, if you liked it, I hope you’ll subscribe, like, and comment. Um, I’ve never written a review like this before. I hope it wasn’t really noticeable, but you probably did notice a little, simply because I couldn’t film much of the train itself, because I didn’t travel the whole way and wasn’t the first to board, which is exactly what you have to do to film something like that. I’ll remember that for next time. But unfortunately it was exactly the route I needed. It just wasn’t the whole route. Um. Exactly. Subscribe, like, comment, tell us how you liked it, whether you’ve ever traveled on the train, what your experience was like and I’ll say goodbye until next time.

In diesem Video teste ich den Nachtzug von Urlaubs-Express auf der Strecke Salzburg – Koblenz.
Urlaubs-Express ist eigentlich ein kleiner Anbieter für Autoreisezüge, bei dem man aber auch ganz ohne Auto mitfahren kann. Klingt spannend, oder?

Leider lief bei meiner Fahrt einiges schief – von chaotischer Organisation bis hin zu Problemen am Bahnhof war vieles dabei. In diesem Video nehme ich euch mit und zeige euch, wie meine Nacht mit dem Zug wirklich war: ehrlich, ungeschönt und mit allen Höhen und Tiefen.

🚆 Themen im Video:

Hat es sich gelohnt?
Wo es richtig chaotisch wurde.
Mein Fazit: Würde ich nochmal mitfahren?

Schreibt mir gerne in die Kommentare, ob ihr selbst schon einmal mit Urlaubs-Express oder einem anderen Nachtzug gefahren seid – und wie eure Erfahrungen waren!

📌Ich würde mich freuen, wenn ihr eine Kanalmitgliedschaft abschließt. Damit bekommt ihr exklusive Inhalte.

📌 Lass gerne ein Like da, abonnier den Kanal und aktivier die Glocke, wenn du mehr solcher außergewöhnlichen Bahnreisen erleben willst!

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Karten: © OpenStreetMap contributors
Musik: Sascha Ende – Lizenz: CC BY 4.0 (von filmmusic.io)
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Mein Equipment:
Kamera: iPhone 13 Pro: https://amzn.to/4nSB10y
Mini-Stativ: https://amzn.to/4kZPLIJ
Mikrofon: https://amzn.to/40oiMpY
Mikrofon-System: https://amzn.to/4lW7xNK
Mikrofon-Halterung: https://amzn.to/4eSrgvv
Adapter: https://amzn.to/44LxeJS

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Über mich:
Ich bin Constantin Pläcking, Eisenbahn-Youtuber und Journalist aus Koblenz am Rhein. Ich bin 1988 geboren und komme ursprünglich aus Stuttgart, wo ich auch aufgewachsen und zur Schule gegangen bin. Studiert habe ich in Tübingen und Southampton, wo ich erste Medienerfahrung gesammelt habe.

Ich habe seit ich klein bin Interesse an Bus und Bahn und fahre sehr gerne mit öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln. 2025 dachte ich mir: Das könnte ich auch auf YouTube machen und habe diesen Kanal gestartet.