Bernina express from Milan - train through Europe help

[Powergower]

I'm looking for advice for a holiday in planning. 5 adults travelling in Aug. We plan to fly to Milan and use that as our base. We want to stay there a few nights then get the train to Tirano and from there get the Bernina express to chur. We plan to stay here for a night then travel back to Milan the next day.

Is this possible? I've read everything the man in seat 61 says about this trip but i can't make sense of how best to do it from Milan if you use that as your base and need to return there for flights home.

We would love to actually get the eurostar from London to Zurich, stay there overnight, travel to chur then on to Milan but I've totally confused myself with how and where to buy tickets. Plus it's ridiculous, but our travel from up north to London eurostar is costing way more than flying into Europe! Do we need to show passports if travelling from Italy to Switzerland and back? I've tried booking tickets in advance but you can't book as far in advance as this but you can reserve a seat on the Bernina express (but not book the ticket)??

Maybe we should fly into Milan-tirano-chur-zurich- then fly back from Zurich. Any views on this route?

We've had a terrible few years and this is meant to mark the beginning of some time together as a family.

Any advice at all for a euro rail traveller most welcome.

Interrail tickets might be cheaper - you can get them for a short period - then it’s just supplements for Eurostar and the Bernina Express.

For international connections to/from Germany be sure to look at both 2nd and 1st class travel - there's often amazing deals on the latter for train-bound tickets compared to open tickets. Secondly, the German rail network is a major mess due to decades of underinvestment. Be prepared for major delays so never, ever book the last train of the day and make sure to leave plenty of time - hours, possibly - for connections. In fact, the Swiss railways have dropped a bunch of cross-border services from Germany because the chronically delayed trains were messing up their own system so bad!

We did this albeit a few alterations and it was the best holiday we’ve ever had. Top tip don’t be in chur on a Sunday as apart from the clock it’s shut 🤣 have a fabulous time it’s amazing.

Maybe take a different route there and back?

[[https://www.seat61.com/trains-and-routes/bernina-express.htm#Bernina_Express_to_go_from_London,_Paris_or_Zurich_to_Italy

Return via Munich and the Brenner Pass

Book the panoramic carriage on theBernina express. It's a seperate ticket but worth it.

Head to lake como from Milan for a couple of days

As mentioned upthread, it may be worth looking at interrail costs as an alternative to see if it's cheaper. Interrail ticket could also cover your fare from home city to London as you mentioned it was expensive. So home city to London, London to Paris, onward travel to Switzerland could be done all in one travel day. You would need to pay reservation for eurostar and TGV out of Paris, but once in Switzerland no reservation charges. It can also be used on the panoramic trains. If travelling into Italy there would be reservation fees to pay too though. It's worth checking, you can check what reservation costs for routes would be on the Interrail website.

Great! Lots to think about, thank you.

@Anapana would you be willing to share your itinerary? How did you go about booking? We are working backwards, booking the Bernina seat reservation first, then the ticket, then everything else.

Note to self: don't forget to buy the friends and family railcard !

OP - would love to know how you got on, your end itinerary and any top tips as we are considering similar for next year.

Getting woken up by border guards for passport checks is surely one of the great pleasures of international sleeper trains? Or is that just me? It's not like much sleeping is done. Treasure the memories of being woken by Swiss border guards en route to Rome and looking outside to see the station staff having a snowball fight against the alpine backdrop.

This year we took the Balkan Express (Serbia/Montenegro - admittedly non-EU) and were - oddly - woken twice for passport checks. The kids thought it was like an incredible espionage adventure.