Hello everybody,
I'm Tina and I would like to book an Interral pass for August 15th.
I have a couple of questions that I hope you can answer:
1) Is it necessary to stay only one day for each city? If so, on the basis of what is this day calculated?
2) Is it sufficient to indicate the stages to book the round trip (if the stages will be the same)? or do you have to reselect the stages for the return?
3) How do I know when to reserve seats?
Thank you all
Best answer by MartinM
View originalHey,
Hello Tina
The IR global pass has no restrictions on when and where you use them, they are simply a pass to catch any valid train in 33 countries of your choice.
So there is no problems staying as long as you like in any town.
There are a couple of limitations, travel in your country of residence and some trains have a mandatory reservation requirement.
You can use any global pass in your home country for 2 days without restriction, referred to as in and outbound days. These can be taken at any time and in any order or even not at all.
Reservations are separate from your pass and there is plenty of advice on the community. They can be acquired from several providers and fees are often payable.
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, 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.
Thank you for your answers!
I would therefore like to ask you:
1) so, if I leave Venice to get to Lisbon. For the return, is it sufficient that I indicate Lisbon - Venice as stages? Or do I have to mark every single stage I traveled on the first leg?
2) Is it possible to know in advance (before paying) which trains require reservations?
thank you all
Interrail does not work on return journeys. It treats each as a separate journey. It can also work on individual train journeys or combination journeys.
When planning your trip (i.e. the full diary of your pass journeys) your intended journeys are recorded, but that is all. You need to add each train journeys to your daily pass, ideally train by train just before you get on the train. If you add all trains in one go then you have to delete if you have to change your plans (missed connections, cancelled trains or simply fancy an unplanned diversion.
Your planned journeys are not tablets of stone - you are in control.
If you check via “find train times” on the IR site for Venice to Lisbon you will find it is one of the most difficult train journeys in Europe.
There are many changes, takes at least 3 days and can cost upwards of 100 euros pp in reservations. Also many of the Interrail routings take longer routes to keep you on the fastest trains.
Italy to French border (Ventimiglia/Nice) is relatively easy in a day and simple to reserve seats as needed. French border to Spain (Barcelona then Madrid) is a challenge for both reservations and timings (14 hrs to 21hrs) - expensive if you cross the border on a SNCF/TGV or you would need to use regional trains with no reservations. Finally Madrid to Lisbon is tortuous and lengthy - there are no direct trains.
That night train rule was changed a few years ago. What counts now is the date (not the time) when you board a train:
https://www.interrail.eu/en/support/interested-in-interrailing/what-is-a-travel-day
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