5 days in Bernese Oberland, any advice on passes?

My wife and I are flying into Frankfurt September 1st , spending one night and then on to Bernese Oberland for 5 or 6 days . We will stay in Gimmewald, Murren, Grindewald etc..then on to Italy for 5 days. ( no real plans there).

We will try to hit the top of the Jungfrau, Shilthhorn, first, Lattebruten etc..

ANY advice on rail passes from Frankfurt to Bernese Oberland and all of its cable cars etc then on to Italy? (We might rent a car in Italy)

We just returned from the Bernese Oberland about a week ago. I purchased the four day regional pass for our family of five adults traveling together. We used it for rail travel from Thun to Mürren, up to the Schilthorn and Birg, Mürren to Meiringen, bus travel to Reichenbach Falls and the funicular, rail and bus travel to Ballenberg Open Air Museum, and the train from Meiringen to Lucerne. Rail and bus travel was 100% covered. The Schilthorn, Reichenbach funicular and Ballenberg entry were discounted by 25-50%. The the Schilthorn and Ballenberg are relatively expensive. I don't know whether we saved much overall, but even so, I think the pass was well worth it just for the hassles it saved in purchasing individual tickets for all our train, cable car and bus riding. Given how many (potentially discounted - not totally covered) cable cars you plan to ride, I suspect you would find the pass useful as well. We bought individual rail tickets for our travel from Netherlands to Switzerland. I doubt you can find any pass that would cover multi-country rail travel that also includes the expensive cable cars in Switzerland.

Hi Sleepwalkin1, welcome to MySwissAlps!

The pass Idorland suggested is a good option. You may want to compare that with the Swiss Half Fare Card as explained here. That will also get you discounts on the Swiss legs of your incoming and outgoing trip. The latter option can be printed at home, but you should do so today to receive the e-mail with the card in time for September 1: you can do so through www.swissrailways.com/ en, and pick "Online Ticket" from the bottom of the list of delivery options. Tickets from Germany and to Italy can be found here: myswissalps.com/ travel/toswitzerland/ train/tickets.

I may have misunderstood, but it looks like you plan to spend the night in Gimmelwald, Mürren and Grindelwald. All these towns are close together. Having one base will work better. Personally I would not pick Gimmelwald as it is very small.

Thank you so much for your reply. We will take all of this into consideration as we are leaving soon. We are very excited about our trip to the Bernese Oberland and plan to see and do as much as possible while we are there !

Thank You !! Looks like I've procrastinated a bit too long on my rail ticket purchases. Do you think it would be ok to just take a rail from Frankfurt to Basel and then just purchase our Bernese Oberland regional passes and a Swiss half fare card at the train station?

I was able to buy the Bernese Oberland passes online on short notice by using the directions (somewhere) on this site. We printed them out just before we left for Switzerland. The email with tickets to print comes almost immediately. We were not given an option to have a card mailed to us using the order method we chose.

Just be careful that the start date is entered and registered correctly. I thought I had it right, but it wasn't and I had to email them and go through a process to order new passes online. They refunded my original order with no problems.

Re: purchasing the Bernese Oberland passes in Basel...you might be able to do that (Arno will know better than I do). But check out the map where the passes apply. You will have to get to Bern on your own as the passes won't apply in Basel. You could buy them in Bern without having to take time out in the Basel station at all. Also, I'm not sure that a half-fare card is necessary or useful in addition to the regional pass. Arno can advise on this.

Hi Greghokanson,

Welcome to MySwissAlps! If you're too late to buy online you can buy the Swiss Half Fare Card at the train station in Basel. It will take 5 to 30 minutes, so you may need to take a later train to your next destination. They may very well sell the Regional-Pass Bernese Oberland too, but I am not sure about that. If not, you need to buy it at any staffed station in the area. If you need it for September 1 or later you can have it shipped to your hotel if you order through www.swissrailways.com/ en/products/ regionalberneseoberlan dpass. The ticket Frankfurt - Basel can be purchased from any of the websites here: myswissalps.com/ traintickets/germany/ price. You'd better order that asap to be sure to have seat reservations.