40 days 12 countries, How did I travel with Interrail?

Hello everyone,
This time I will not tell you about a single trip, but about the Interrail system. You may have heard of Interrail. The system allows you to travel by train in many European cities without buying a ticket again for a certain period by buying only a single pass ticket. There are some conditions for using this ticket. In some places, the ticket alone is not enough, you also need to make a reservation and pay a low reservation fee. Nevertheless, I have known this system, which is more economical and practical than buying tickets individually, since I was young, I wanted to travel this way, but I had never had the opportunity to try Interrail before. With two friends living in Turkey, we decided to buy a 3-week interrail pass back in March. To buy Interrail, you need to live in one of the European cities. Since they live in Turkey, they were able to get it easily. Since I live in the US and use an American passport during my trip to Europe, I had to take euro rail, not interrail. There was practically no difference. You need to download the Interrail app on your phone. Since both Interrail and Euro rail are included in this application, it also offers the opportunity to form a group, make reservations together, and thus sit together. The prices are the same. Only they paid in Euros and I paid in dollars. We took advantage of the discount because we bought the tickets in March. We saved around 100 Euros by buying them one day before the end of the promotion. You have to use the ticket within a year after you buy it. If we cannot use it in any way, we pay an extra fee of around 20$ to get a refund. By the way, there are extra age discounts for young people up to 26 years old and those over 60 years old.

Even if you download the application and enter the ticket information, your ticket does not start unless you activate the ticket. Therefore, you need to do the activation process when you start your journey. After that, you have unlimited boarding for the following days. The ticket we bought gave us unlimited boarding for three weeks. There are also one-week, two-week, and one-month tickets. You can also buy a one-month ticket that gives you the right to ride for only 20 days or 10 days. I recommend this ticket if you are staying longer in the cities you visit. There were days when we could not use the ticket we bought because we stayed in some cities for more than a day, but we also had the opportunity to use our ticket somehow by going to nearby towns. We used it without any problems in Scandinavian countries, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria, but in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, we had to use buses because there were no trains between countries. Since these countries recently transitioned to the Interrail system, we could not use it in some areas, but we could use it between cities within the country. Before the trip, we tried to find information about using the ticket on all traveler sites, including the interrail group on Facebook.

We found some data on the Interrail website and other foreign travel sites but struggled to find adequate information on Turkish travel sites. Most of the content there focused on visa requirements, finding suitable accommodation, and visiting different countries, but we had difficulty locating information about how the train system operates. I write this article to provide preliminary information for those interested in traveling using the Interrail/Euro rail system.

In this system, you usually do not have a paper ticket in your hand. You show the ticket to the control officers from the app on your phone. Therefore, use your phone battery sparingly. Although there are sockets for charging in all trains, we had a lot of battery problems. As you know, phones are used for many things nowadays. We took movies and photos. We used it as a navigator. We searched for information about the places on the Internet. Therefore, our phone started to run out of battery faster than usual and we had some stress in the evening when we were getting on the train in case our battery ran out and we couldn’t show the ticket because the controller looked at the ticket from the phone in your hand. Before you get on the train, you must reserve a ticket using the app on your phone. You don’t need to pay a separate fee for trains that don’t require a reservation, but when the controller comes, he wants to see that you have entered the correct destination on that train, it doesn’t work when the ticket is shown alone. Because mostly they check with the barcode reader they have. I bought Euro rail in case there would be passport control, they don’t check IDs much, and in some places, they ask for IDs for age control for those who buy discount tickets. As you know, the borders have also been lifted. You don’t even realize that you have crossed from Sweden to Norway, so there is no passport control again, we only went through passport controls when entering countries such as Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria. There was no problem as the passport officers entered the trains and checked. Only at the entrance and exit of Bulgaria and at the border of Turkey do you have to get out of the train, get in line, and have your passport checked at the police checkpoint. If you have an Interrail ticket, you don’t need to queue at the ticket office or try to buy a ticket online, you can make your reservation on the app with a very simple process and get on the train, but in some places, they don’t accept the app and want to see a paper ticket, then you either buy it from the ticket office or you have to order it in advance and have it delivered to your address. Reservations are a must, especially on night trains. When we could not make reservations on day trains, we spent time in the dining car or the gaps in between, because if you don’t pay an extra fee and get a seat number, the person who paid for that seat may remove you from your seat. Free reservation does not entitle you to a seat. You don’t have a seat number. You can board the train and take any empty seat, but if someone claims that seat, you must vacate it. If you don’t have a reservation, you are wandering around, of course, this is possible on journeys lasting one or two hours. When we couldn’t get a seat, we preferred going to the dining car and buying tea, soup, or coffee. We weren’t the only ones who discovered this, there were other passengers too, so we were constantly warned not to let non-diners occupy the tables. Anyway, this method is only possible on short journeys. On long trips, the reservation is obligatory on the app. If you don’t have a seat number on this type of train, you can’t board. Even if you have Interrail, in such cases you have to pay an extra reservation fee of around 7-8 Euros to get a seat number. When my friends got a seat number for Oslo-Bergen, I was very depressed because I could not find a reservation. Moreover, the trip was only 2 weeks away and there were no seats. I began searching for alternative options such as a plane or bus, knowing I couldn’t board that train without a reservation. There were no available beds in the sleeper wagons; otherwise, you would have to pay the difference for a bed. Finally, I found a seat reservation between Oslo and Bergen, probably because someone canceled it. I ordered it right away, but it took two weeks for it to reach me because the tickets were mailed from the Netherlands and waited a long time at customs. So, I almost didn’t get to use the ticket. Fortunately, the day I was about to leave, I found my paper ticket in the mailbox which made me very happy. Unfortunately, Norway still applies traditional methods in this regard and asks for a paper ticket. In the same way, my friends also made reservations twice in case they would not make it to Turkey. The son of a friend of ours lived in the Netherlands and the reservations we sent to his address in the Netherlands arrived very quickly. We also paid a lot of postage.

Stavanger -Oslo and Oslo-Stockholm tickets also had to be booked in advance. The ticket we used in Norway also came by mail. We took the Swedish train to Stockholm, which was very convenient, and didn’t have to pay postage. We printed the ticket they sent to our email. In Norway, we were very surprised that there are still paper tickets in places that require reservations, and since the interrail does not pass on Flams Bana, which is chosen as the most beautiful railway in the world, we bought a separate ticket. We went to Myrdal, the journey’s starting point, from Bergen with our interrail ticket and then took the Flam line, which is indeed one of the most beautiful train routes in the world.

We traveled to 12 countries in 40 days, visiting Scandinavian, Baltic, and Balkan countries and then we took the train from Copenhagen to Istanbul. Traveling by train was enjoyable but also tiring. Although we stayed more than one night in a few cities, we usually traveled to a different city every day. It was quite tiring to go from the train station to the hotel and the train or bus station with our bags. We had planned the part of the trip from Copenhagen to Helsinki in advance, so we didn’t have much difficulty in this part as we had hotel and train reservations, lists of places to visit, and information prepared in advance. Afterward, it was a bit difficult to deal with planning and making reservations during the day. During the trip, we researched our destination online and created a list of places to visit. The ferry we used between Stockholm and Helsinki was like a cruise. We had a cabin. We had fun on the ship at night. We also used the ferry from Helsinki to Estonia. We also took the bus to the Baltic countries. Although we took planes, ships, and buses on this journey, we mainly used trains. When our Interrail ticket ran out after three weeks, it was more expensive than buying train tickets one by one. That’s when we realized the value of the Interrail system better. I will tell you about my impressions of the countries we visited on this trip in my future articles. If you write your questions about Interrail in the comments section, I will be happy to answer them. Train travel in Europe is both economical and easy. You also see beautiful landscapes along the way. In trains, there are separate compartments for those traveling with children and pets, as well as sections called silent compartments where you can travel in peace where all kinds of noise are prohibited. For these reasons, I recommend Interrail as the most convenient and enjoyable system for traveling in Europe.

Your fellow traveler Canan