I'm about to use my pass for the first time in 5 days. I've just read that you pick the train times you want and it instantly gives you qr code tickets to get on the trains. But I've seen that not all journeys on the app are accurate. So if you use a travel day and pay for a seat reservation on the app (I'm not 100% sure how that works yet) and you could turn up and there's no train. I haven't clicked on anything yet so I hope someone could help me figure this out.
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That's one of the reasons you should never use the app to plan. And you should also never activate the pass or a travel day in advance. You can do that a few minutes before boarding, when you're certain your train exists and you'll be on it.
It's best to check timetables on national planners. For international journeys, bahn.com or the DB Navigator app are a good choice.
You can rely on bahn.de to be accurate for almost everything (including many bus connections) in much of Europe, but in practice on the day you really should check the departure board in the station to be close to 100% sure your train is running. If you aren’t in the station (because you are connecting from somewhere else) then there are a number of reasonably reliable sources of mostly-real-time information on train movements.
You also need to take context into account - if you are looking at Zurich to Basel for example then whether the scheduled 1530 train runs or not is not too much of an issue since you can take the 1545 or the 1515, or the 1500 or the 1600. If you are looking at a trip that is only served by 1 or 2 trains a day then you may have more of an issue.
But regarding your question about what to do if you turn up and your train doesn’t . . . speak to station staff and they will help sort you out. At the end of the day, if there is no train there (just like no plane at the airport) there’s not a whole lot they can do about that *specific* train, but they can help you out with suggestions and alternatives.
Do you buy the tickets on the interrail app or at the station?
Your ticket is the Interrail on the app. You need to activate a day adding a trip to your pass.
The pass is your ticket. For trains that are fully included, you don't need to buy any other ticket.
Reservations are separate. Mandatory for some trains, optional for some others and not possible for many trains. They can't be booked in the rail planner app. That app can only forward to some of the websites where you can book, including the Interrail website. That website however is the last website you should use.
An overview of where best to book is here:
https://www.seat61.com/interrail-and-eurail-reservations.htm
If that doesn't work for you, then we need route, date and departure time to be able to help.
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