The site correctly states that reservations are not required, but can be purchased anyway. Am I doing something incorrectly? It looks like I can make a reservation on the Deutsche Bahn site. Should I just do that instead? For the Swiss part of the travel there's absolutely no need to make a reservation. No one ever makes reservations in Switzerland except for the panoramic coaches on the scenic routes. For the other part of the trip you can check on bahn.
It is cheaper to make any possible reservation at bahn. Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days. The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways.
You can look at the guide in the link:. If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details departure date, time and route preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works. The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass, until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past.
