NO, no special advice.

Just use any of the multitude of booking or hoStel sites (booking also often shows them, or there is hoStelworld) and read the reviews. LOnger standing hoStels, that are still open (many have closed-for obvious reasons) will have 100s of reviews. Or you can select to price, distance to train.

IF you happen to be member of some EUR (or CN/AU/JP/US) hoStel organisation-this is a kind of special other ´chain´ that will have that info on the site about sisters-hihostels.com.

Best advice is often from the happy young people you are bound to meet who have just gone the other way with this magic railpass. And NO-you do not have to bok each&everything monthes advance too!