I purchased a 30 day pass which must be activated by May 1, 2023.
I plan to travel from April 1, 2023-April 31, 2023.
Why is it so difficult to get a clear answer to this question?
There is no 30-day pass. You've probably bought a 1-month continuous pass?
Also note that 31 April does not exist.
But it is best not to activate in advance. You never know what happens. If something unexpected happens on your planned start date, and you'd like to postpone travel, then it will be too late to cancel the activation, because that is only possible until midnight CET before the start of validity.
If you want, you can test activation and choose a start date well in the future. After that, please cancel the activation and don't activate again until shortly before boarding your first train.
And depending on which RES you intend to make-not all may already be available, but as GB you probably aim for that €*- that would be a wise idea to get it asap. In general 2-3 month before most get released-but in some areas only 1 month before travel.
BTW; as most newbees passusers tend to be young people grown up with what is named these ´social media´ much of the info you want is thus is osofunny and perhaps even instructive youtube/fb and the like. Older adults tend to overlook those things.
In general the new style mobile passes copycat all things that the old style paper passes would offer/require.
Here is some useful information from the experienced travellers in the Community regarding both planning, reservations and activation of pass and travel days.
Planning
The rail planner is normally not up to date, as it only is updated once a month, so to be sure of the time table you better check the timetable and availability on the websites of the national railways. The bigger national railways, like DB (Germany) SBB (Switzerland) and ÖBB (Austria) cover several countries.
Reservations
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is to use other ways to make reservations than the Interrail/Eurail website. You can look at the guide in the link:
https://community.eurail.com/train-connections-reservations-47/how-to-get-reservations-105
If you, after having looked at the guide, have questions about how to make specific reservation, please give your travel details (departure date, time and route) preferably in a new topic, and you will get advice.
Please note that Interrail/Eurail charges an extra fee of 2 EUR per person and train in addition to the fee for the seat reservation.
Activation of pass
During the activation process, when you choose the start day of the validity of the pass, the first day of the validity period is automatically made a travel day, even if you don't enter a journey, the advice is therefore not to activate the pass before the first travel day as you only can deactivate the pass before 00.00 on the day the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you will loose travel days if you have activated the pass in advance.
It can be wise to make a test and activate the pass with a start date well in the future and then deactivate the pass immediately, just to see that everything works.
Activation of travel day
The advice from the experienced travellers in the community is also never to activate a travel day, that is connect a journey to your pass and create the ticket (QR code), until just before boarding the train, otherwise you might loose a travel day if your travel plans change in a late stage You can't delete a travel day in the past. A travel day can only be deleted until 23.59 CET the day before the travel day.
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