Hey !! 👋🏻 Me and my friend have been trying to plan our interrail trip the past few weeks and it's so overwhelming we would love some help from someone who's been there.
We are from Greece and the original plan of our trip was:
Greece to Ljubljana by plane on 3/4. Stay there for 2 days.
Ljubljana to Bern on 5/4. Stay 'till 8/4. (3 nights)
Bern to Amsterdam 8/4 - 11/4. (3 nights)
Amsterdam to Paris 11/4. Stay 'till 13/4. (2 nights)
Paris to Barcelona on 13/4 and stay until 16/4 (3 nights).
Then fly back from Barcelona to Greece.
The thing is. Firstly we would like to explore Switzerland's nature, Interlaken, Lauterbrunnen etc. however these are around an hour from Bern and there is not connection from Ljubljana to Interlaken. So we would have to go to Bern (explore there a bit) and then use another travel day to go from Bern to Interlaken etc and then back again to Bern. Do you think we can see everything mentioned in less than a day? And basically use 1 day at bern and the second at Interlaken?
Secondly do you think hostels are more worth it than Airbnbs? We looked at Hostelworld for each destination for the dates we picked and we actually realised the prices mentioned are for 6-8 people dorms, for just ONE bed and ONE day. So basically if a hostel, like most, says "starting from 40€", it would be 40x2=80€ for each, which is not really a budget price, if we end up paying around 450€ just for accomodation each. Airbnb's are around these prices also but I just don't know how trustworthy they are. Does anyone have a decent tip or recommendation for a place to stay in these destinations mentioned above?
Third, we noticed that flights to Amsterdam fro Greece and way cheaper than flying to Ljubljana. I thought maybe we could start from there but then I can't figure out the route. I tried Amsterdam-Paris-Barcelona-Bern-Ljubljana. But Barcelona to Bern in 16h+ and so many train changes.
Finally some of the train trips we checked for the mentioned dates have short transfer changes, some even 5 minutes, and honestly I don't think we'll be able to go from one train to another in 5 minutes especially in stations that are big. Here in Greece we don't really use trains and we have honestly no idea how a train station works or if it's going to be hard to locate the trains. So is it worth it making a seat reservation and losing the train? Are train reservations worth it at all if they are not obligated? We heard April is not a super busy period to travel so we will be able to find seats. Another thing, if we lose a train, and take the next which might be like an hour later, we will obviously lose every other train we would have taken if we hadn't lost the first. Has this happened to anyone like ever? Going from Ljubljana to Bern is 11 hours and 4 train changes. If we lose the second train with a transfer time of 6 minutes we will lose the next 2. Will we be able to pick the next train? Are they coming and going that often? We don't wanna sleep in random train stations in the middle of Europe.
This gives me so much anxiety huh but I want to do it so bad :/
Be brutally honest what are your suggestions?
