Interrailing - anyone done it?

Did it in 1992. Got all the way to Ios via Prague, Budapest etc. Amazing adventure, probs a bit different now.

I did it in 1990 (set off the day after Germany won Italia ‘90). A month making our way down to Brindisi then a ferry to Athens and spent a further two months island-hopping around Greece. All the Interrailing was done done using the Thomas Cook European Train Timetable and we camped the whole lot (until we got to Greece where accommodation was really cheap at the time in ‘pensions’. We did Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, France and Italy. An amazing experience.

I sold my car to fund it and with what little money I had when I got back, I bought my first mountain bike (a Reynolds’ Framed Peugeot).

We’re doing a mini/3 week Interrail trip - leaving for Amsterdam tomorrow and then going down to Berlin, Prague and Budapest. Got a few days at Lake Balaton at the end then flying back (which is cheating really).

Lots of info on www.seat61.com

Did it back in about '85/'86 I think. Got as far North as Bodø, Norway (above Artic Circle) and as far south as Krk in what used to be Yugoslavia (but is now Croatia)

Separately, also got a rail ticket for Switzerland (something like valid for 8 travel days in 14 days or something like that)

Both were great trips...

You might find it cheaper and/or more practical to use a mix of buses and trains.

In Germany there's the monthly regional train ticket at 49e. In spain ALSA and Arriva buses are cheap and get you to places the train doesn't. Flix buses cross the continent, BlaBla buses cover France and into neighbouring countries. In France the SNCF runs slow trains to many destinations which have a maximum price which means you can travel in peak times for a sensible price.

We travel a lot around Europe on public transport with teacher holidays, an Interrail ticket has never been cheaper than the trip we planned buying the first tickets well in advance then making it up as we went along taking cheap practical options.

Even better is having a Brompton with a Borough front bag for kit and a tent on the rear rack with you then riding down German rivers, along coastline and E routes between train and bus trips. The Brompton in its bag is within DB, SNCF, BlaBlabus etc. dimensions so there's no argument, bike reservations or being turned away because a previous train was cancelled and there are two (or more) trains worth of bike capacity for one train.

Some recent examples from Pau, France:

2023 - Flix bus, ALSA bus, Arriva bus to Malpica - walking  to Fistera - BlaBlabus, Flix bus Pau = 150e each

2022 - SNCF, DB to Berlin, cycle to Prague, train to Germany, cycle to Black forest, SNCF home = 200e each

2021 - SNCF to Paris, cycle home via Reims and Massif Central = 50e each

The BlaBlabus across Norther spain runs in the day and is very pretty, Czech train journeys are beautiful.

Junior did it this summer.

The pass price was good, but there are some restrictions on which trains you can just turn up to. Some require reservations which can be charged for and/or need to be planned / booked a decent amount of time in advance.

An eu pass also gives you inbound and outbound travel in the uk and includes Eurostar. My main advice would be to plan ahead, which sort of takes some of the fun out of it IMHO

We did this last October, travelling to Italy for a month from the UK. I also did it back in the 80s when you could only do it as a young person, but now they even give a discount for us over 60s.

We planned and booked our travel into and out of Italy well in advance, to make sure we got a specific overnight couchette down to southern France, and back from Switzerland to get a specific Eurostar into London. But other than that we had an approximate itinerary but often made our choices of exactly when to move on just the day before. Maybe if we were travelling during summer holidays pre planning and reservations well in advance might have been more important, but in October we could always get the train we wanted.A few things we learned were:
- Rail travel is fantastic for visiting cities, but is often more difficult for visiting places and viewpoints in the country.
- Most big countries have a high speed rail system (think of Eurostar or HS2) where you pay a small additional reservation fee in advance to go on the train, although you can do that even 30mins before travel.
- It’s is better travel and less stressful to focus on staying in fewer cities for several days each rather than trying to go somewhere different every day. For example Florence is worth at least 3 days alone, and you can easily do day trips from there to Bologna, Sienna, and Pisa so it could be a good base for nearly a week.
- Booking Air B&Bs in walking distance of the station the day before travelling worked fine, although this was October.
- You have to book tickets via a special Eurail App or in person at the station, the App works ok but had a few glitches booking things like sleepers in Italy.

I would certainly do Eurrail again but next on my itinerary is a month in Japan by train.

My main advice would be to plan ahead, which sort of takes some of the fun out of it IMHO

I don't entirely agree. Yes, have a broad plan, but be prepared to adjust and adapt. For example, when I went, we planned to go to Bordeaux, well, because it's Bordeaux and that's terribly French yeah? But the reality for us was that we didn't like it, the campsite was shit so decided to up sticks and go somewhere else (Le Mans or Aix-en-Provence I think it was - we did both but I struggle to recall which we did after Bordeaux). Similarly we went to Belgrade and couldn't wait to get back out so jumped on an overnight train and headed to Dubrovnik. It must be so much easier these days though, having such a wealth of information at your fingertips.

We did it last year, 7 day pass. As above , do your homework to make sure it works for your plans and actually saves you money - if you enjoy journey planning it's great fun! We booked four long day journeys well in advance, including from  home in Yorkshire to Munich, and from Brussels back to Yorkshire, and for those four longer  trips alone it was worth it. It's more flexible  in northern European countries - French, Spanish and Italian high speed networks require a supplement on booking, and you have to book a seat, no standing. German  trains and stations are often overcrowded, and seemed to me to be almost as unreliable as in the UK. Booking Spanish trains through the renfe site is hard - on this year's non interrail trip we ended up on long distance busses when we couldn't get tickets at stations.  Once you're on the move, the interrail app is easy to use for planning and booking tickets.

While interrail worked for us last year, we didn't use it for a trip to Spain this year, and we're planning another rail trip next summer to eastern Europe, and I don't think we'll use interrail for that, staying more flexible, booking less in advance, doing shorter legs.

Whether you use interrail or not, hopping around Europe on trains and busses is great fun and very rewarding, yeah there's a wee bit of stress over connections from time to time, and it's more expensive than flying, but for us it's well worth it.

Edit no idea how that's ended up a quote!

I did it with a mate in 2007. We planned in advance insofar as we knew when we were starting and when we needed to be back, and when we arrived in a city we booked our train out to the next place in a couple of days. This was all done with a European rail timetable actual paper book, queuing at rail station ticket offices, and using dodgy youth hostel computers.

I had a great time though as someone else noted it's much more straightforward to stay in cities than the nice countryside places in-between them. Apart from Switzerland where we arrived in a valley near Interlaken whose name escapes me right now, and instantly decided that we would be staying longer than we originally planned.

I did it in '86. Bloody great. Very many happy memories.

Interlaken

We went there. Such a beautiful place - the colour of the river is something of such beauty 🙂

By the way - children go free and first class is not a huge premium. I'm hoping to go from Balkans back to London in October and it should cost us about ~$250 for transport (if I haven't mistaken something).

Most reservations can be done using planning app, but not for UK trains, so you can use this instead
https://www.acprail.com/seat-reservations/

I did it in 1987 for three weeks. It was absolutely ace and sometimes little daunting.

I was robbed while asleep on an overnight train from Nice to Venice which wasn't very nice. They took my brand new Minolta AFZ 35 mm compact. Sometimes it was frustrating. Sitting on trains that didn't move with no explanation. Running out of cash. Getting hounded by the purveyors of genuine gold rings and Rolex watches on the Promenade des Anglais!

One of the highlights for me was the Paris to Lyon leg of a TGV journey to Nice. Having a 33cl Kronenbourg at almost 200 mph was a awesome.

Do it.

Not interailling as such, but took the train to Norway in Feb instead of flying. Three days on the train, stopped in some new places I'd never have been to, ate a load of different food, saw some cool stuff out of the windows and generally had a tiny adventure. It was ace and I'll definitely look into multi-day train travel again.

I was robbed while asleep on an overnight train from Nice to Venice which wasn’t very nice.

Yeah, lots of what we read ahead of our trip was about pick-pockets (especially in Rome).

By heck it isn't cheap!

I've just priced up a 5 day trip:
Day 1: North East - London - Amsterdam and then Nightjet overnight to Vienna
Day 2: pootling around Vienna and then nightjet to Milan
Day 3: Milan - Zurich via the Bernina & Abula route. Nightjet to Hamburg
Day 4: Pootling around Germany to get to Berlin and then Nightjet to Graz
Day 5: Graz back up to Vienna over the Semmeringbahn and then flying back to Gatwick before train up to the North East.

Total cost? More or less £1000
Its the nightjet reservations at minimum €120 - 140 per night which ramps the cost up

TEE

I've used night sleeper trains and night busses sometimes for the convenience of arriving in a city early morning which saves a night in a hotel. But doing so I miss out on what I most love about travelling by bus and train, watching the world go by.

Your propositon sounds like a nightmare, whyterider93, a series of grotty railway stations and associated red light districts. That's an endurance test not a holiday. In five days I'd do no more than Amsterdam, Berlin and return via Paris with at least one full day in Berlin.

We're going Interrailing in September, up to Sweden via Copenhagen. We're really looking forward to it and train is definitely my favourite way to travel, but I do think you need to come at it thinking the trains are part of the adventure rather than just how you're getting from A to B.

I suspect your trip probably needs to be just right too for Interrail. Too busy a schedule and I think your holiday could end up just a  blur of trains and stations, but on the other hand if you only need a couple of trains the interrail pass probably isn't going to work out financially.

I added up all the trips we'd need to take and the pass was worth it for us, but YMMV.

Ah, see for me trains are the draw, so spending so long on them is the attraction and point of the trip

I take the alsa bus Valencia to Barcelona a few times a year, book c 2 months in advance it's all of 5 euros per trip.  I too take a Brompton but alsa charge 10 euros for a bike so I just hide it in a big bag that disguises it.

If u download alsa app you don't pay any booking fees.  You also earn a few points u can exchange for discount off trips.

Overnight trains are nice and fun, and you can sleep, but going on a different one every night would be a nightmare.

Also, @whyterider, you're going from NE England overland to Graz, and then doing effectively a circuit of Germany, then going back down to Austria, then flying into London and then going by train back to NE England. That's nuts imo...

...BUT if the train journeys are the hokiday activity for you, then that's just how much activities cost these days. If you wanted to spend 5 days boozing, restauranting, downhilling, or skiing etc across Europe, that's how much it would cost..

On the basis trains are the draw  you could include trips on interesting trains. The Brokenbahn steam train in the Harz in Germany, the petit train jaune in the eastern Pyrénées (I don't know how Chipps persuaded them to let him drive it), some narrow guage trains in northern Spain, le tramway de Mont Blanc to Nid d'Aigle or Mer de Glace. More interesting then trying to sleep in a swaying bunk with random strangers to deal with.

sleep in a swaying bunk with random strangers