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Hello! I will be traveling with my 10 year old daughter this December from Stockholm-Oslo-Gothenburg-Copenhagen-Stockholm-Helsinki-Kiruna-Ostersund-Stockholm. We are traveling by train with the exception of the Tallink ferry from Stockholm-Helsinki and a bus from Pello to Kiruna. It has been a long time since I have Eurailed so naturally I have a few questions: 

  1. What train routes on my itinerary require advanced reservations?
  2. Do they have baggage storage in the train terminals?
  3. Does the Scandinavian Eurail Pass cover all of these train routes?
  4. Are there any additional fees?
  5. Do you have any must stay hotel recommendations for Oslo, Gothenburg, Copenhagen and Helsinki?
  6. Also looking for must eat restaurant recommendations, especially in Copenhagen as we will be spending Christmas Eve there.

Thank you in advance for your help in making our trip come alive!

 

In Sweden there are mandatory reservations with a fee on high speed trains and IC trains. Reservation can only be made until 10th of December right now. Reservations of Swedish trains are best made at sj.se. 

Please read more below about reservation.

 

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 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.

Having just been in SE+DK and in FI in may-all on a pass:

@1 nearly all-except when you sometimes can also use local trains

In FI NO RES are needed-but they are well advised-as your seat can be claimed by an honest Finn at every stop. RES must be done online-in fact in SE there are NO more SJ-sales points life (but still a lot for local/regional transit)

@2, yes but its extremyl expensive-you see the price but it is per HOIR and not as usual per  day!!

@3 yes. ONly FLIX train and MTR in SE are excepted. But these are not shown in app

@4.the extra to pay are thee RES fees (if done only mostly like 5-6€/pp/ride, more for overnite sleepers

@5 check booking com. Without any clue I never give tips. Except perhaps the over famous ICE hotel near Kiruna, maybe also in Lappld/FI. To comfort you, there will also be Hilton and Holiday INN in major towns.

@6 never done that-better be VERY sure it is open at all (>90% close Xmas eve)-better check a general forum like tripadvisor for this

@1 nearly all-except when you sometimes can also use local trains

In FI NO RES are needed-but they are well advised-as your seat can be claimed by an honest Finn at every stop. RES must be done online-in fact in SE there are NO more SJ-sales points life (but still a lot for local/regional transit)

Booking a reservation online is hardly possible for Finland and Norway: only via Eurail/Interrail and then only as a paper ticket that has to be sent by post. You can book by phone though and at the ticket office. Also outside those countries.

@6 never done that-better be VERY sure it is open at all (>90% close Xmas eve)-better check a general forum like tripadvisor for this

In a big city you will almost always find a place to stay and eat, also during Christmas. I've done it a number of times in Germany and used Tripadvisor to find restaurants.

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