Perhaps the most common method of travel for intrepid young travelers taking a gap year or enjoying their graduation present, Eurail is a pass that gets you a certain amount of travel days in a certain number of countries within a certain time period. For instance, your pass could be applicable only to Italy and France, for a two month period, and with 5 travel days. While it is a good deal in some cases, it is a very deceiving system.
The summer after my freshman year of college I decided to buy a Eurail pass. I was starting in Paris after studying abroad, and had two weeks to make a blitz of some of Europe’s biggest destinations. I hit, in this order, Paris, Berlin, Munich (all 3 on overnight trains), Salzburg, Budapest, Venice, Cinque Terre, and back to Paris, making for a total of 5 countries. I bought the 5 country Select pass for the 5 countries those cities are in, and thought I had gotten a great deal.
However, when I went to the SNCF station (SNCF is the French rail network), I found out that the Eurail system made it very difficult for the common person to purchase the tickets because of the following reasons:
1) You were only allowed to purchase tickets into and out of the country you whose rail network desk you were purchasing from. So since I was at the desk of the French rail network SNCF, I could only purchase my ticket to Berlin, and the ticket from Milan->Marseille->Paris.
2)Eurail has no online ticket purchase system, you must present your pass in person to be able to buy a ticket.
3)Many trains have a limited number of seats available to pass holders.
When I got the very last seat available to pass holders on the overnight train from Paris to Berlin, I realized that there was a very good chance of not getting the trains I needed to take to keep to my strict schedule.
I decided I had to find a different way of getting hold of the tickets for the later part of my trip, so I went to a travel agent friend of a friend based in Paris. He was able to call all the right tickets offices and get me all the tickets I needed, but charged me a commission on each one. As someone who has done extensive travel, if the method of obtaining those tickets wasn’t evident to me, I doubt very many other people were able to navigate buying their own tickets.
Some other things to look out for:
-Does your voyage stop over in another country? Even if you have no intention of getting out, your pass better cover that country. I passed through Belgium on the way to Germany and it was only by the good graces of the conductor, who turned a blind eye to my inadequate pass, that I wasn’t kicked off the train. Let it be noted though, that the ticket office didn’t prevent me from buying the ticket even though there was a stopover in a country I wasn’t supposed to be able to visit. So just because your pass will allow you to buy the ticket doesn’t necessarily mean you can use that ticket. Complicated, right?
Some good things:
-If you play your cards right you can save money.
-Overnight trains only count as one day.
-Usually applies on most regional trains, so if you arrive somewhere the day of you can usually take a regional train for free.
-Conductors sometimes fail to stamp your pass, which can give you an extra day or two.
There are also other options for rail passes, namely InterRail, which is generally more popular among the European youth.
Websites:
www.raileurope.com
www.interrail.com
www.eurail.com
Tags: discount rail travel, Eurail, european rail, Interail, pass, rail deal, rail pass
