I leave at the weekend and feel a little nervous about using my pass. I have a paper pass, travelling into Italy. Can I confirm, if the train doesn’t need a reservation, I simply write the journey on my paper planner and board the train? I sit anywhere that doesn’t have a reservation ticket on the seat? Is this correct?
Also, do I need to validate my ticket? It has the start date on it and is a 22 day pass.
As long as you have the train listed in your paper pass there is no need to validate before boarding.
You are quite correct - as long as no reservation is needed you simply write the details in your paper pass and take a seat. Note in Italy reservations are also required on the Inter city services, but these are considerably cheaper than the high speed Freccia services.
Paper Interrail passes do not require validation before use, this is because you will have designated a date for their use and it comes printed on the pass.
Yours is a consecutive pass so you don’t need to do anything with it other than fill in the travel diary, if it was a flexi pass you would need to add in each use date on the pass before your first journey every day as well as filling in the diary.
It is still possible for non-europeans to get Eurail paper passes that are undated which do require dating and validating before use, if you see discussion about paper pass validation it only applies to these.
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