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I (non EU resident, vaccinated outside EU so no Green Pass) was planning to visit Switzerland, Austria and Hungary this month, traveling by train. Looking in Google maps, I saw that the train from Zurich to Salzburg crosses the border with Germany. Would I need to comply with the German COVID entry restrictions (entry form, etc), or those wouldn't apply to train travelers for which the final destination is Austria?

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    You are subject to the German entry requirements, but they differ depending on wether you are entering to stay or just for transit. Even the page you are linking to explains this quite understandably. When it comes to filling out the entry form, the page says: 'Exemptions to this registration requirement apply in particular to persons who are only passing through Germany.'
    – Tor-Einar Jarnbjo
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 12:51
  • Also I believe the train does net even stop in Germany (or least not all of them, haven’t checked the schedules extensively)
    – jcaron
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 14:23
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    The rail jet does indeed not stop in Germany (goes from Kufstein directly to Salzburg), but there are plenty of connections through Munich as well.
    – Hilmar
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 20:10
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    Note that non-EU travelers visiting Switzerland can (and perhaps should, if you plan to e.g. eat in a restaurant) apply for a temporary Swiss covid certificate which is supposed to be interoperable with the EU certificate.
    – mlc
    Commented Feb 6, 2022 at 20:58

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The RJ between Zürich and Salzburg runs through Germany as a corridor train. That is a train that runs through a foreign country without stopping, with the special privilege that the passengers on board do not have to pass border formalities.

There is an interesting article about those trains here:

https://www.hiddeneurope.eu/corridor-trains

Austria now has pretty frictionless borders with all eight of its neighbours, all of which are members of Schengen (the last to join was Liechtenstein in 2011). But in the second half of the last century, frontiers were firm and the Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) secured privileged transit rights for its domestic train services to cross Germany, Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia in order to link Austrian communities along the border. To this day, the hourly Railjet trains from Salzburg to Innsbruck still run non-stop through a 115-kilometre corridor of German territory.

As a result, when you are on that train you do not officially enter Germany, and are thus not subject to German entry requirement.

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