What is an Interrail?
Interrail is a train pass that allows you to travel throughout Europe with a single ticket.
This type of travel is unique because, on the one hand, it allows you to explore many places during the adventure, on the other hand, it brings with it a significant complexity in organizing it.
Let’s take a closer look at Interrail. As mentioned above, Interrail is a special pass that allows you to travel throughout the European rail network with a single ticket.
On the official website interrail.eu you can find all the information about how to buy and use the ticket.
How does an Interrail work?
There are different types of tickets, depending on how long you want to travel and how many days you want to travel during the selected period.
What does this mean?! It simply means that once you choose the total duration of your trip, you will need to decide how many actual train travel days you need to reach your destination. A “travel day” means an entire day during which you can take all the necessary trains to reach the next stop without limitations (as long as they fall within the ticket conditions).
During the purchase, you do not need to specify the exact dates of the travel days, just the quantity.
Let’s take an example: your trip starts from Milan and ends in Amsterdam. Now imagine purchasing a ticket with a 1-month duration and choosing 3 travel days.
On the first travel day, you will activate the ticket and take a train from Milan to Paris, where you can stay as long as you want until you decide to leave for the next stop. At this point, you will activate the second travel day to reach Brussels (or a nearby city due to the short distance). Whenever you want, you can finally activate the last travel day to get to Amsterdam. In this way, you will have effectively used 3 travel days within a month without having to book the travel dates in advance.
Interrail extreme version
For the Interrail extreme version, I simply mean a traveling journey as described above but with the difference that instead of purchasing an Interrail ticket, you organize yourself to travel by train, bus, and/or car sharing.
This adds a lot of flexibility to the trip, expands the destinations that can be reached, and may be able to save on travel costs. However, it is also true that this choice brings with it greater difficulty in organizing the trip, as you will need to analyze all the options and schedules of how to get from A to B by train, bus, or car sharing.
Moreover, it should be considered that with the Interrail ticket, you have a single platform to manage the trips, whereas in this case, you will have to purchase from different platforms (requiring the creation of an account and/or other specific actions).
Finally, the Interrail ticket is restricted only to the European railway network, and therefore it could be a constraint if you want to travel outside the EU.
Always be careful to check beforehand the train companies participating in Interrail ticketing.
Itinerant Travels
This type of travel has many advantages, such as the beauty of traveling across Europe or other places in nature, relatively low travel costs (if planned carefully), and finally a lot of flexibility.
On the other hand, it is more complicated to organize, but this depends on how much you want to organize your trip. It remains a fact that an itinerant trip requires more research and analysis than a “classic” one.
How to Organize an Itinerant Trip
As with any trip, the first thing is to choose a starting location (it could be where you live or a place to reach).
Next, what I do is choose a couple of destination goals.
Once the main destinations are set, I open Google Maps and look for all the stops I want to make along the way. This gives me the opportunity to choose between different itineraries with different stops and costs.
This way I will have “Ideal Itineraries” on which I will then gather basic information for each stop:
- Accommodation costs
- Cost of living
- Activities to do (museums, excursions, etc.)
- Ease (and feasibility) of moving on to the next destination/stop*
- List of coworking spaces or suitable places to work (in case of remote work)
At this point, I have a spreadsheet for each itinerary that gives me an idea of costs, transfers, and possible attractions. The research is not super thorough because I just need it to get a clearer idea of each itinerary and to keep in mind:
- Starting and destination points
- Intermediate stops
- Cost for each stop (accommodation, food, etc.)
- Indicative cost for transfers
With this process, I can choose the least expensive itinerary, the most adventurous one, or the one that inspires me the most, and so on.
- If it is not feasible, I change or remove that specific goal
Tips and things to be aware of
- Don’t plan every detail of the trip but leave room for freedom. Book only the most important things or those that you know would be significantly more expensive if purchased at the last minute.
- If you are a beginner, read Plan your first Slow Travel
- Purchase travel insurance from those recommended in my article The best tools and apps for planning and enjoying every trip as Digital Nomads
Tools
Here are some tools (besides paper and pen) that I use to organize the trip:
- Wanderlog to organize stops and costs (or get ideas)
- GetYourGuide to find activities and experiences.
- Trainline to search for train or bus connections (but I recommend making the purchase directly with the chosen company)
If you want to explore all the most useful tools, read The best tools and apps for planning and enjoying every trip as Digital Nomads. Thanks for getting here, see you soon 💚