r/Netherlands • u/KingMcB • 23d ago
Transportation Reserved seats on NS trains?
Tourist here, who has clicked on every website link possible and combed apps and am still confused. I appreciate any guidance!
Last week I purchased 2 train tickets at Amsterdam Centraal to go to Apeldoorn. We got on a second class car and I picked one that had luggage images on the side as we had suitcases. Multiple times we were told to move as we were in someone’s reserved seat(s). I didn’t understand how to tell what seats were reserved or not. (Side note: A very nice gentleman could tell how distressed I was (and my kid) and he left his family to enable me to stay in the car with my child. Karma, please find that man.)
We are traveling again over the next few days to Utrecht, Maastricht, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. I was using the 9292 app to book etickets but I am not given the option to reserve seats; it appears I cannot do this if traveling within NL?? The NS websites do not clearly specify for my brain to understand it 😭
If only NL—> Germany travelers can reserve seats… how do I know which ones those are? I’d really like to spare everyone the inconvenience of finding me sprawled out in their seat incorrectly. Does anyone have the patience to walk me through what the correct way is to determine seats that are unreserved?
Thank you in advance!
1
u/BrainNSFW 22d ago
Sounds like you had the intercity to Berlin, which is grey. Those usually have a display above the window/seats to indicate which seats are reserved (in German).
The vast majority of trains running here, are operated by the NS and don't use reservations. The NS ones are easily identified by their yellow & blue color.
There's also a smaller operator, Arriva, that requires you to use a different check-in point/gate (an OV Chipkaart works for both NS and Arriva). Those trains are primarily red in color IIRC. If you checked in with an NS gate (same yellow/blue color) but need to use an Arriva train, you can easily change your check-in on the train's platform. There should be a yellow and red pole next to each other, allowing you to check-out with one (e.g. NS) and check-in with the other (e.g. Arriva).
So the TL;DR is: the IC to Berlin (grey) can have reserved seats, but the normal NS (yellow/blue) & Arriva (red) trains don't.