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Eurail Pass and Poland

  • 15 October 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 404 views
JamesVenatus

Hi all,

My wife and I are traveling through Europe in March 2023. Given the list of destinations below we are considering getting a Eurail Pass.

Amsterdam→Berlin→Warsaw→Krakow→Venice→Zurich→Lucerne 

We have used the Rail Planner app to confirm there are available trains within all locations that accept the Eurail Pass. We are using November just to check availability as March is too far away, but there are no trains showing within Poland that accept the Eurail Pass.

Can anyone confirm if I have made an error or is there something else happening?

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Best answer by Angelo 15 October 2022, 11:59

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Traveling from New Zealand.

4 replies

Angelo
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Hi, from 12 december 2022 the new 2023 timetable starts in Europe, and many train companies are late with opening the booking and to show the timetables. The most updated website will be the one of the train operators in this case in poland PKP IC, Eurail.com is one of the last ones that get updates and the railplanner app get only via app updates the new timetables, because it works offline. 

Do you have any questions? Feel free to ask in the community! Known languages: Deutsch, Italiano, English.
A
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Userlevel 7
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Not all railway companies share their full timetable with the rest of the world so the Railplanner is not always a good place to look for information. There are lots of trains in Poland that are included in Eurail. They just don't show in the planner, at least not at the moment. Here is a screen shot from SBB, the Swiss railway.

 

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
A
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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.

Please note that I don't work for Interrail/Eurail and that I don't reply to personal messages.
M
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Having just come back from Krakow I can definitely comfirm the pass is taken there, on all long-dist trains run by PKP, but not by all small scale-local lines (which you did not mention anyway).

Wa-Kr has fast trains about ev 1 or 2 hrs (plus more via the old uch slower lines), can in PL only RES from 1 month before.

Krk->Vnz is with some changes, and will not be fast-likely best via Wien (Vienna) and will then take nearly 20 hrs-with 1 legs overnite.

Except very first and last sector all trains need RES.

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