My First Interrail 2022

“Gentlemen, excuse me. But, my friend and I have to catch a train.“
Doc Brown in Back to the Future III.

2022 was the year I finally did my first Interrail trip. At the same time it was the first time I ever Solo traveled. Spoiler Alert: it was the best decision of my life so far and I can only recommend anyone to do this. In the beginning I did not really know about what Interrail actually is, so I want to explain it to you.

Scenic Train Tracks in Innsbruck, Austria

What is Interrail?

Simply put, Interrail(ing) means that you are travelling around Europe by train. This opportunity is for everyone having their main residence in a European country. Otherwise there is the possibility to buy a ‘Eurail‘ ticket (which is basically the same, just for Non-Europeans). You pay one ticket, which can be for a couple of days, weeks, a month, two months or three months (that is the longest option and the one that I chose). The first selection you make apart from how long, is, if you want the Global Pass (which is for all of Europe, starting from 185€) or a One Country Pass (valid for one country of your choice, starting from roughly 50€). You can check all the options and pricing here. So in theory you do not pay further for most of the trains that exist in Europe (or the country you choose).

Types of Interrail Passes

You can either use a printed pass, where you write down your trips by hand (you need to order that in time for the pass to arrive at your home address!) or download the Interrail-App, where you can plan your whole travel and look up train times and stations. The app also offers a nice feature where you can see all the statistics of your trip and how many CO2-Emissions you saved, which is kinda nice to know.

Usually the three month Global Pass that I used costs around 700€, but because I got lucky and booked the weekend they had their 50-year-anniversary, it was 50% off. That is also the reason why I decided to take the three month ticket.

The Global Pass came with one Outbound and one Inbound travel, which meant that you were allowed to leave your home country with the ticket as well as return home with it once. That was a major thing that I did not like too much – that I could not use the ticket in Germany apart from these two times – even if you would just have to pass through the country it is not possible. I hope that they will change this at some point. Although I understand the reasoning of the concept to get to know other countries, it would really add to the experience to move more freely.

What is also important to note is, that the Interrail tickets are cheaper if you are younger than 28 years or older than 60. That counts as long as you start your travel before your 28th birthday (or after your 60th). So if you turn 28 on the 20th June 2023, you simply need to start travelling with your ticket until the 19th June 2023.

That was another reason why I decided to do Interrail in 2022 – it was the year I turned 28. I was convinced all the time that I am already “too old” for the cheaper ticket, but once I read that I was, in fact, not, it was decided that 2022 is gonna be my Interrail year. And that is what happened..

Check for Sales or Discounts

That is why I would recommend to you to always check beforehand and see if there is any discount going on. At the moment they have 10% off until 5th January 2023 as part of their Winter Sale. Although I think they won’t go as high as 50% that soon again, it’s still worth it to check the prices now and then and not miss out on the sales. I also remember there being one around March in 2022.

Seat Reservations

This is mainly because it is not done by just buying the ticket. Of course, it is an amazing opportunity and I think you can save a lot of money if you use slower trains only, but you need to calculate with more costs coming at you.

One thing that I did not love too much was the fact that especially countries in the South (like France, Spain, Portugal or Italy) require you to book seat reservations for a lot of trains. This goes mostly for high-speed trains – but I had the impression that in some countries there simply was no other connection to go to the next place other than using high-speed trains. Which meant that you needed to buy seat reservations, if you wanted to or not.

As I was not aware of this fact before planning my trip, I chose almost all of these countries as my destinations for my trip. So in the end I was kind of nervous on how and where I can get the reservations done. The main issue in this for me was not the fact that you need to pay extra (most of the time it was ‘only’ around 10€ for one reservation – which adds up in the end, though). It was the fact, that you could not book these online or even from the country you were starting from for the hell of it. I tried online on all their platforms. You need to physically go to a train station in the country you want the seat reservation for. Usually especially the Swiss and German platforms are really useful for this, but for other countries it did not work by the time I tried it.

Order Seat Reservations Online (if possible) or Buy Them in Advance

That created some unnecessary uncertainty for my upcoming trip and made me really anxious on if I can use the trains in Spain or Portugal in specific. In France there were plenty of options without reservations. Also I remember it being possible to make reservations online for french trains – if you do it in time. I would recommend at least 2 weeks before your trip starts, as they need to send you some of these tickets to your home address (and this can take quite long I figured).

In the end, the train station in Geneva, Switzerland, was my knight in shining armour. There I was able to buy all seat reservations for my whole trip (meaning France and Spain, for Portugal I booked busses instead). Which was a huge relief to me.

At the same time it annoyed me, because it’s a real bummer to all the promised flexibility and spontaneity of Interrail traveling. This was the exact opposite of that. Sooner or later I just accepted the fact and also tried to avoid using the train in Portugal and Spain as much as possible to keep being more flexible.

Other Forms of Transportation: FlixBus

That is when I booked tickets for my second form of transportation: FlixBus. You can say about it whatever you want, but in all my experiences it was reliable and a decent way of traveling. Sometimes I even preferred this to the train, as I did not need to change too often and look for a new seat or where to put my bags. You just throw everything inside of the belly of the bus, go inside, sleep and eat and eventually you arrive. Really convenient.

I don’t want it to sound like I did not love the train rides more. It’s much faster and somehow more enjoyable and thrilling than a bus ride in my opinion. Personally I think a good mixture between chill bus drives and adventure train rides were the best way of transportation for me. This is probably something you need to figure out for yourself if you do not already have a preference.

Public Transportation and Accommodation

Once you arrive at the place you want to go to, there waits the next task: public transportation and finding your accommodation. I pre-booked all my accommodations the week before I started my trip. It was all Hostels (booked with Booking.com for me. This is for two reasons: to save money and to easily meet people. Even though I did all this trip by myself I did not want to stay alone all the time.

For this, Hostels are the perfect opportunity: if you want to be by yourself, you can usually easily isolate yourself and not talk to anyone – no one is forcing you to do anything. If you want to meet people and spend time with them, you are also at the perfect place. I really got to love Hostels during this trip. (My Ode to Hostels will appear in another separate entry, so stay tuned if that is what you want to read about, hehe). Adding to that, in another entry I will talk more about public transportation in different countries, cities and how to best get around.

Useful Apps to Check Public Transport Information

TheTrainLine (My favourite app to check connections for longer distances and across countries – shows you train options, prices and also if busses are available. You can book your tickets there directly, too. The price if you book there includes a small fee for the platform).
Rome2Rio (It’s a really good application to check how to get somewhere with different kinds of transportations and as far as I know it has information almost worldwide. Even when there was nothing shown on Google Maps I still got some information here – saved me especially in rural South of France).
Omio (I used it mainly to double-check on a second app if the numbers and locations of busses/trains were the same, as sometimes it got really confusing on where to got and which bus to take).
Citymapper (most useful in bigger, well-known cities as they do not have information for all places yet – if they do, it is extremely useful and you can choose all different kind of transportation options from walking, biking, e-scootering, Uber or public transportation).
DB Navigator (This German App from ‘Deutsche Bahn’ has live information on all the timings and platforms of the trains, which is extremely useful. It does show the train times for other countries, too. Although it depends on the country you are in if they have live information or not. In my case I never had live schedules for France, Spain or Portugal).
FlixBus (They also have an app with which you can book tickets, buy seat reservations and also check-in to the bus via QR-Code. It is really useful if you don’t want to print your ticket. Always worked without issues for me).

Useful Websites to Check Train Information

INTERRAIL: https://www.interrail.eu/en
FRANCE: https://www.sncf.com/fr (SNCF)
SPAIN: https://www.renfe.com/es/es (RENFE)
PORTUGAL: https://www.cp.pt/passageiros/en (CP)
GERMANY: https://www.bahn.de (DB)
SWITZERLAND: https://www.sbb.ch/de (SBB)
AUSTRIA: https://www.oebb.at (ÖBB)
CZECH REPUBLIC: https://www.cd.cz/en/ (CD)

How to Find the right Platform with No Live Information?

In countries like Spain, France and Portugal they usually show the platform your train leaves around 15 minutes before departure on the screens at the station. You need to check for your train number and/or destination and see which platform it is at.

This was something that always made me kinda nervous, as I never knew if I need to run to the complete other side of the station or not. In the end it always worked out, though. That is also the reason why you will find everyone gathered around the screens at all times – and once their platform is shown some will suddenly disappear. Interesting to watch.

My Interrail-Route

Prague, Czech Republic
Vienna, Austria
Innsbruck, Austria
Geneva, Switzerland (they talk french there)
Lyon, France
Montpellier, France
Marseille, France
Nîmes, France
Madrid, Spain
Porto, Portugal
Lisbon, Portugal (including a trip to Cascais and Sintra)
Santa Cruz, Portugal
Lagos, Portugal
Faro, Portugal
Seville, Spain
Málaga, Spain
Valencía, Spain
Barcelona, Spain

Map of Interrail Route — Map of My Interrail Route

The Most Important Aspects of Interrail

Interrail is cheaper for Children, People under 28 years and People older than 60 years
Check for seasonal discounts or sales on their website (e.g. Winter Sale 10% off)
Use the Interrail-App (RailPlanner) to track your trip and see which trains to take
Check your needed seat reservations (it tells you in the RailPlanner app) and book them in advance (if you can)
Plan extra costs for seat reservations, public transport, accommodations, food and activities
In Spain, France and Portugal check the screens at the train station for the platform your train leaves at (don’t worry if it takes longer or ask someone working there in case you get nervous).
Useful apps to check for trains/ public transport: TheTrainLine, Omio, Rome2Rio, Citymapper, DB Navigator
Consider private transport options like Taxi (FreeNow or call the local number), Uber, Bolt, etc.
Try to learn the basics of the language of the place you are going. A little goes a long way.
Be nice. In my experience most of the people want to help you and they will return your kindness. Smile.

In the upcoming postings I will go more into detail about how to pack for this adventure, all the places that I went to, what I saw and did there, what were the most important learnings and I will show you my personal favourites.

Stay Loco!

Booking.com

europe, interrail, traveleurope