Greetings!
I bought a 2-months Continuous Global Pass. I am going to travel for two months exactly. My trip will begin on early June.
Therefore, I am bit concern about when to activate the Pass.
Does anyone there know if I activate the Pass now, the ‘Timer’ will start ticking from today? So that the Pass will expired on 29 June, even my trip have NOT start jet?
General advice is to only activate just before travelling. I usually do it at breakfast on the day I'm leaving :)
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 you choose the start day of the validity of the pass. Once the validity has started it can't be changed even if you haven't travelled. The advice is therefore to wait with activating the pass and starting the validity until the first day of your travel as you only can deactivate the pass no later than 23.59 CET on the day before the validity starts. If your travel plans change in the last moment you can't deactivate the pass and change the validity.
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.
Thanks AnnaB and BrendanDB for your answer.
Maybe I have NOT explained the situation correctly. I have a 2-months continually ticket. I don’t have to worry which day to use.
I understand that I can plan whatever I want for my trips before I activating my pass.
However, currently, I only ‘dare’ to add my Pass into the app, but not very confident to continue with next step - activate the Pass.
I intent to activate my Pass on the day when I arrive in Germany. I am going to start using the Pass from day 1, right after I landed in Frankfurt Airport.
However, the problem is I won’t have SIM then, I may have difficult to be online to do the activation. Therefore I am contemplating to activate the Pass before I leave. But if the ‘Timer’ started kicking, right after the activation, I will lost 1 or 2 days (of usage) which I will still be on the way to Germany.
Don't activate your pass until you are in Germany. You never know if something unexpected will happen.
There will be free WiFi at the airport that you can use. I guess that you will arrange a SIM once you are in Europe.
But to answer your question. When you activate the pass you need to select a start date of the validity of the pass. This date can be in the future. But you can only cancel the activation of the pass until 23.59 CET the day before the start date of the validity.
Thanks AnnaB! Yes, I will buy a SIM after I check in my first stop hotel, but not in Frankfurt Airport. I heard that the SIM cards sold in airport are more expensive than in the city.
Talking about SIM card, do you know if non EU citizen can buy a Germany SIM card? In 2018, when I was in Germany, I was told that only EU citizens or permanent recipients are able to purchase a SIM card since 2017.
But to answer your question. When you activate the pass you need to select a start date of the validity of the pass. This date can be in the future. But you can only cancel the activation of the pass until 23.59 CET the day before the start date of the validity.
Sorry, what do you mean by ‘But you can only cancel the activation of the pass until 23.59 CET the day before the start date of the validity. ’?
An example. If you activate your pass on the 1st of May with the start date of the validity on the 6th of May, then you can only deactivate the pass until 23.59 CET on the 5th of May. Once the validity has started at 00.00 CET on the 6th of May you can't deactivate.
As unexpected things might happen, the advice is to wait with the activation until just before boarding the first train of your travel.
Thank you so much AnnaB!
Very comprehensive explanation. Alles Klar!
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