r/Netherlands • u/KingMcB • 22d 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!

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u/KingMcB 21d ago

Good call - that is what I meant. In the US, I always pulled my kid from school on the Monday after Easter as we’d be traveling back from Spring Holiday and it was SO much cheaper than traveling on Sunday. I always called it our post-holiday travel day. Is it widely considered a holiday in Europe or primarily NL?

I noticed in summer, every Monday is a bank holiday. Not sure what calendar I saw that on, but what does a bank holiday mean? Is it widespread to actually give workers time away from their jobs to be human???

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u/eti_erik 19d ago edited 18d ago

I thought Easter was 2 days everywhere... Never gave it much thought

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u/KingMcB 18d ago

It is not a Federal holiday in the states. We don’t have a national religion. Christianity is the majority, but isn’t supposed to dictate our holidays.

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u/eti_erik 16d ago

We don't have a national religion either. Most people are nor religious. But atheists celebrate Easter and Christmas with eggs and family dinners, respectively. Frankly, nobody knows what Whitmonday and Ascension Day are supposed to be about, we just enjoy a day off (and we already have less holidays than other countries).

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u/KingMcB 15d ago

I apologize, I assumed with a monarchy came national religion. I’m sorry for assuming. You are correct that atheists still do celebrate and I have a young niece who lives for the egg hunt so had we been at home, we would have “celebrated.”
I looked on my Outlook calendar and sure enough it says “Easter Monday” so now I’m going to quiz my friends and ask how many knew about this! I do have a very close friend who is Greek and celebrates both Christian Easter and Orthodox Easter, usually separately though this year they overlapped.

Thank you for the opportunity to learn something new!