Skip to main content

Hi, we are planning to visit Italy, Switzerland, Paris, Netherland in a few days. is eurail global pass is worth for that? How much is will cover in Switzerland?

Use brains and think: impossible to answer this without more details-how many days, what trips-in the mountains (expensiive extra) etc. Swiss also has its own Swiss Tourist/Holiday pass which covers much more as INterRail-and also cost more and is only valid in Swiss.

As CY is in EURope I think-but double check, it is also still INTERrail for you-there is no markeable difference though for you.


See the online guide for discounts offered on Swiss privately owned railways, often 25 per cent off. 


@moulichakraborty 

If you plan to go to France and Italy soon and if you plan to use the high speed train there or any night train I recommend that you make your reservations before buying the pass or that you be prepared that the trains you want to take are fully booked. 

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 ticket 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, 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.


@AnnaB @mcadv Can I reserve a seat before buying a pass?? As i’m checking the availability in eurail app and i hope only which routes it is showing ‘not in the pass’ are not included in the pass. other routes may be that need a reservation or not, are included with pass I can use. 
We have a plan for almost 20 days and in Switzerland it is for 3 days and planned to visit Jungfraujoch mountain trip, Interlake, Zurich, Bern, lucerne. and planned for the cable car from lucerne to mount pilatus.

As this is the very first time we are travelling to Europe and have no idea about the process what we are seeing that in Paris pass is not very much useful. So we gonna to use pass only in Italy, Switzerland and Netherland. and if we have to take swiss pass separately then there is no need of taking global pass. can you guys please help me out which one will be better in comparison for the trip?


It is not possible via interrail.eu, but you can reserve seat without a pass with most train companies. For Italy, Switzerland and the way to Netherlands is it possible without pass to book the reservations before. 

Here is a Tutorial how and were you can get reservations: 

 

In Switzerland nobody reserves seats (except panoramic trains for tourists). Same for the Netherlands. For long journeys I would recommend it. 

 


You will not see the availability of free seats in the Eurail app unless you have bought a pass and connect that to your account. What you see is the price for a seat if a seat would be free. There is no check against the reservation system. Many people have been fooled by this and discovered that there are no free seats once they have bought the pass.

 


See the online guide for discounts offered on Swiss privately owned railways, often 25 per cent off. 

@Traveller749 

Most privately owned railway in Switzerland give 100% discount. It is only in the Jungfrau-region where the discount is 25%.


Here is a map where you can see the validity of Interrail/Eurail in Switzerland  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.interrail.eu/content/dam/pdfs/SBB-Interrail-Eurail-S-20-WEB.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjLrpz38vD4AhVvRvEDHedcA6oQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0GRuobye7G-YfIdFjgBl8_

 


Reply