Interrail Eurail tips | things I wish I had known before interrailing | backpacking Europe by train

hi my name is mia welcome back to my youtube channel and welcome to another intro video we have just come back from our trip two days ago so i figured it'd be a good time to share some tips with you that i wish i had known and that i thought of while traveling so i took some notes and i'm trying to go in like a logical order uh so yeah without further ado let's get right into it number one would be to plan your trip accordingly so you don't waste your money on getting the wrong ticket now if you've ever been on the interior website you would know that there's many different ticket options um ranging from like three days within a week to seven days a month two weeks within a month uh three months 15 days within two months and so on and so forth um i'd recommend you just check out the interrupt website for that but you want to make sure that you plan your trip accordingly so you don't waste your money on getting a ticket that has way too many travel days then you could even do or even want to do now a good tool for that would be the intrarel app where you have this planner section and you can research your trains and they put it all in a nice little map for you to visualize it and yeah just make sure you count the days that you need you're aware of how much time you have of school or off work and yeah just don't overspend tip number two is also for money saving and that is to wait for entry rail tickets to go on sale so if you're planning this trip a couple months in advance i'd recommend not to buy the ticket immediately because interrail offers like 10 discounts all the time um so yeah just a quick little money saving tip if however you are living outside of europe and you have to get a year rail ticket those pretty much never go on sale so in this case you can just go right ahead and purchase your ticket and those tickets are good for 11 months after you purchase them anyways so you have plenty of time to use it if you buy it throughout the sale quick little break i totally forgot one very very important tip in this video and i just simply couldn't finish editing it and upload it without this in here it is super super important to have a financial budget for your trip that allows for emergencies meaning extra seat reservations for an extra night in a hotel for maybe even a flight like we had to pay for um because the trains and friends were striking and it was a whole mess there anyways getting seat reservations and for a while they didn't accept internal tickets anymore it was a whole chaos and um so we ended up having to purchase flight tickets for the both of us which ended up costing us 200 more per person which is obviously an expense that was unexpected that was last minute and that was an emergency so just make sure you have extra money put aside in case anything goes wrong like this and um yeah now back to the video next tip if you can just avoid the busy seasons uh go in the off seasons meaning spring fall and winter or at least try not to go within the exact holidays especially summer holidays as the trains will be packed and yeah obviously hotels are going to be more expensive all the cities are going to be full of tourists so yeah if you can try not to go during vacation time tip number four is to check with your phone provider for coverage within the different countries that you want to see obviously this is very important as we all have come to rely on our phones for everything to do research to navigate to books seat reservations book hotels etc you name it we probably need our phones for it so it is important to know that you will have service within the different countries with our phone provider for example we did have service within almost every country but very much reduced so you have to watch your data usage for switzerland for example is a common country for phone providers to not have service so just make sure to take the necessary precautions or whichever provider you have number five would be to pack as light as possible because whatever you bring you will have to carry on your back um now i have tried to do that and i will link my packing list down below and my packing list uh worked out for the most part but i have made some mistakes um and that brings me to tip number six is to not underestimate how cold it can get now um this will obviously depend on your trip we went in the beginning of summer and we traveled to mostly northern and central european countries and it was still very much cold on most days so we ended up needing our warmer clothes most of the time and that's obviously what we brought the lease off but even if you don't end up going to northern countries and you just stay within like italy and spain and all that um i would still recommend to at least bring a comfortable hoodie because the train's air conditioning is so cold a lot of the time that you'll be glad to have brought it number seven would be to research the different methods of reservations now for most countries it's easy you can just book your seat reservations right through the internal website or online but there are exceptions to this for example in spain you need to actually purchase your ticket in person at the train station and at the major train stations this can mean hours and hours of wait time so you need to be prepared for that you need to schedule time for that and i know for friends sometimes they still require you to um send your ticket uh physically to you by mail so again just plan according to that maybe make those reservations before you leave on your trip so you have them comfortably sent to your home next tip number eight would be to research the demand of these trains now a good method for that would be to use the db app the deutsche ban app where you can type in the routes the trains that you're going to take and it'll say something like low demand or high demand now if it already says high demand expected in this app or on their website then you will most likely not find an empty seat to sit on so that's totally up to you if you want to save the money and sit on the floor or stand the whole way or if you're willing to spend a few euros to have a seed for your journey but yeah just it's a good resource to kind of get an idea of whether you're gonna need to buy seat reservations or not another tip is for those really really high demand routes for example going from london to paris is a very very popular route so you will need seat reservations and those sell out really really quickly so i recommend you book those a couple weeks or even months in advance just book them as early as you can try to you know nail down your trip all the dates that you will go and book that already because like i said tickets sell it fast and um it'll be very frustrating to be stuck or even have to like switch to taking a flight or something so yeah make sure to book those seat reservations early on number 10 would be to double check train times now referring to the intramural app again which is very handy and very reliable most times but we had one instance in prague where i researched our connection and i relied solely on the time that the interval app mentioned is to then get to the station and find out that our train was actually half an hour early now lucky for me we went super early and we still had 10 minutes to figure out the platform that we needed to go to and we caught that train but just to avoid any kind of stress or avoid missing your trains just double check and don't just solely rely on the intra-rail app because they may have outdated or wrong train times tip number 11 would be to look for accommodations as close to the station as possible or find a storage locker for you to lock your backpack in because it is very uncomfortable to carry your stuff halfway through the city and also it's just much more convenient in general because every time you get to a station and you just walk five to ten minutes to your accommodation you can just drop off your bag and you're free to go and explore same in the morning if you have an early train to catch you don't have to get up hours and hours in advance because it's only a short way to the station that way tip number 12 would be to bring snags train rides can be very long and no one wants to go hungry especially if you take an early train nothing will be open before you go on the train and there won't be any chances to buy food if the train doesn't have an onboard bistro so just come prepared buy your favorite snacks and you're all set also those long train rides might get boring at times now of course it's beautiful to look out the window and enjoy the scenery but sometimes there's really not much to see out the window sometimes all you're gonna do is be passing one field after the next and it's not gonna be very entertaining so make sure to bring something to spend your time whether that's a book or whether that's like a card game if you go with a group of friends or i don't know download an audio book bring a kindle whatever you you feel like spending your time with just bring something to stay busy tip number 14 would be to document your trip in any way possible whether that is through pictures through videos through keeping a diary or journaling or drawing whatever your preferred method is it's just going to be so nice to look back on your trip years and years from now and yeah last tip just go out there and enjoy don't overthink it um and i hope you have a great trip i hope my tips helped you if they did make sure to give it a like and subscribe so you don't miss any of my other videos so yeah thank you for watching have a great day bye

Channel: MIA & JULIO

Views: 18,106

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Id: 79Mpl1f78fs

Length: 11min 6sec (666 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022