European railways bring passengers to their work and school, to their leisure activity or holiday destination. From long-distance to local and regional trains, the railways have something to offer Infrastructure Modern, efficient and reliable infrastructure is the backbone of the European economy.
The rail network in Europe enables the transport of passengers and goods across member states with high Rail is an essential component of the transport system, and transport is an essential function of any modern economy. Interoperability and safety enhance and ensure the seamless and safe circulation of passengers and goods on railway vehicles across the European Union and even beyond its borders. Social affairs in the rail sector cover a broad variety of issues, encompassing working conditions, diversity and gender equality, health and safety at work, education and training of staff, as The free Eurail passes for children may swing the balance towards buying a pass, even for a pre-planned itinerary.
Now you really have to do the maths, as shown in the next section. Why not mix-and-match a pass with budget train tickets , to save money on pre-planned parts of your trip? Or if the start of your trip is known and fixed, but you want to stay flexible for the rest, you could buy a cheap ticket for the first journey or two, then use a railpass.
And if your plan includes a few short hops, use cheap local point-to-point tickets for those, and buy a cheaper pass with fewer unlimited travel days. Perhaps you came to this page thinking that railpasses save money , but these days they often don't. It's more accurate to think of them as the deluxe option offering affordable go-as-you-please flexibility, instead of cheaper pre-booked budget train fares that fix your plans in stone.
Stands to reason, really. A pass giving unlimited flexible 1st class travel ought to cost more than a cheap budget ticket booked two months in advance direct with the train operator Step 1, work out what a Eurail pass costs per day Working out the cost per day makes it easier to see if it'll save money over the point-to-point prices. Just divide the pass cost by the number of days travel it gives you or, for a continuous pass, by the actual number of days you think you'll be using it.
I've worked it out for you with 2nd class flexi passes here:. Step 2, factor in any likely Eurail reservation fees You need to pay reservation fees for certain trains in addition to the cost of the pass. The cost can be significant if you're visiting the pass-unfriendly countries, but might be negligible if you're visiting pass-friendly countries. For planning purposes, here's a rough - but still pretty accurate - rule of thumb:. Step 3, now work out what point to point fares would be Go to the How to buy European train tickets page and select the starting city for each journey you plan to make.
On the following page, select the destination city. I'll tell you the best routes and trains between those cities and which website to use to book or price it.
European trains normally open for reservations 90 days before departure or in a few cases or days and in eastern Europe only 60 days, If your European trip is still many months away, pick a random date in the next days and check fares for that date. The prices won't change much! Don't rely on a ticketing agency in your home country to tell you point to point fares, or believe 'point to point comparisons' made by people trying to sell you a railpass.
Overseas agencies often can't access the cheap fares for every operator. So I repeat, follow the advice on the How to buy European train tickets page. You'll usually also see a more expensive fare called standard or Standardpreis or Flexpreis or Base price or similar, which is the top-of-the-range fare which you'd pay at the station on the day.
So if you demand flexibility, this is the price with which to compare the cost per day of a pass. Yes, a Eurail may well save money over these expensive on-the-day full-price fares, depending on how far you travel. Railpasses only make financial sense for Italy if you plan to travel a significant distance every day, or perhaps make two medium-distance trips every day, which few people do.
If you're prepared to forego flexibility and book cheap no-refunds no-changes advance purchase fares you can save quite a bit over the cost of pass. This is by far the cheapest way to make such a circuit, if you can book ahead and don't want flexibility. If you want to stay flexible and are under 28 years old , a pass can save money over full-flex on-the-day prices. On the other hand, if you're over 28 you're still better sticking with regular tickets even if you pay full price at the station.
Booked months ahead at www. I would think long and hard before choosing to make a London-Paris-Brussels-Amsterdam circuit using a pass rather than advance-purchase tickets. You don't need to specify exactly what date you want your Eurail pass to start when you buy it. The pass validity will start on whatever day you validate it at a station in Europe, which can be done any time in the 11 months after you buy it. So even if you bought your pass in March to use in July, then had to postpone your trip until September for some personal reasons, this wouldn't be a problem - you'd simply keep the pass and validate it when you got to Europe in September instead.
Example pass : This is a global days in 2 months Flexi pass. The real thing will be printed on security-background ticket stock. As you can see, the overall validity period here is from 25 March to 24 May, and there are 10 spaces marked 1 to Simply write the date in one of those spaces each time you want to 'spend' a pass day. Each box gives free travel from midnight to midnight beyond midnight if using a sleeper train , subject to paying any reservation fees or surcharges of course.
A Continuous pass looks very similar, but without the 'flexi days' boxes. Larger image. Courtesy of Eurail The Eurail pass travel diary The Eurail train travel diary: You simply need to fill this out each time you board a train.
You send it back after your trip free postage and it's used for market research purposes. If you forget to fill it in, most conductors will simply wait while you get your pen out if they even bother asking to see it in the first place , but in theory there could be a 'fine' so remember to fill it in before or as soon as you board. You can ask for more pages at any main station if you run out of space.
Validating your pass When you get to Europe and want to start using your pass, you need to 'validate' it at any main station before you get on your first train. You do this at the ticket office, the booking clerk will enter the start date on your pass and rubber stamp it. Your Eurail pass is then ready to use and the overall pass validity period starts. So if you had a days-inmonths pass, the overall 2 month period would start from that date.
Alternatively, if you're absolutely sure of the date when you want your overall pass validity to start, you can specify that date when you buy your pass. It then arrives pre-validated from that date and there's no need to validate it at a station. Using your pass Continuous type Eurail passes are then valid for unlimited train travel every day through the whole pass validity period.
Flexi type Eurail passes give you a certain number of unlimited travel days during the overall pass validity period, which is usually 2 months starting on the date you validate the pass. If the number of days is, say, 10, there will be 10 empty boxes printed on your Eurail pass. On a day when you decide to use one of those 10 days of unlimited travel, you simply write the date in one of the boxes in ball-point pen.
You now have unlimited train travel from midnight to midnight on that date. You do not have to decide in advance which 10 days these will be, you can decide as you go, simply writing the date in a box each time you want to 'spend' a day of free travel, until all your boxes of free travel are used up.
Tip 1: It's a beginner's mistake, but even if you have a fixed itinerary, don't pre-date all your boxes for the dates you think you'll need them at the beginning of your tour. Unexpected things can happen, once you have written a date in a box, you can't change it.
Play safe, write in the dates as you go along. Tip 2: You aren't forced to use your pass for every train trip you want to make. On the other hand, if you bought a 5-day pass and only planned to make 4 longer distance trips, you may as well use the spare 5th day for this day trip.
Unlimited travel means unlimited travel! I'm not sure which part of 'un' people don't understand, the 'u' or the 'n'! You can take as many trains as you like between midnight and midnight that day, 1 train or 20 trains, 10 miles or miles, you can stay on trains all day if you want to.
Though there may be seat reservations or small supplements to pay on certain trains, more about that below. Filling in the travel diary Your pass comes in a cover, and attached to that cover is a blank travel diary.
Each time you take a train, you need to record the date, where it's from and where it's to, in black or blue ink - that's in addition to filling in the travel date on the pass itself if it's a Flexi-type pass.
The railways use this as market research, helping them to allocate Eurail revenue between operators. To make it clear, Brussels to Nuremberg with a change in Frankfurt requires two separate entries, Brussels-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Nuremberg.
However, if a conductor found you had made only one entry, Brussels to Nuremberg, they should point it out and maybe ask you to change it but that's all. In theory there's a fine if the conductor finds that you haven't filled it in at all, but in practice most conductors will simply ask you to do so if you haven't.
However, there's always the risk that you'll meet a jobsworth, so play safe and fill it in while you're waiting for the train or as soon as you get on. If you're using a mobile Eurail pass in the Eurail app on your smartphone rather than the classic printed pass, mobile passes are new in September there's no paper travel diary, you just use the Eurail pass app's journey planner to select and add a trip, or you can add one manually.
Which trains can you use with a pass? See map of rail network in the Eurail countries. Eurail passes also cover many but not all private operators in Switzerland and a few other countries, as shown in the country by country guide. Map of rail network in the Eurail countries. You may be given a small timetable booklet with your pass People often think that the trains in the booklet are the only trains you're allowed to take with your Eurail pass.
Nonsense, of course not! You're allowed to use any regular scheduled train run by the operators covered by your pass, whether it's in that booklet or not! Top tip, download the Railplanner App I recommend downloading the Railplanner App for your smartphone from www.
This is a great Europe-wide timetable app which you can use to check train times whilst on the move - the timetable works offline, so no data cost issues.
Eurail passes don't give free travel on buses, trams or metros in big cities as these are usually run by urban transit authorities, not by the national train operator.
Eurail passes don't cover some private train operators For example, passes don't cover the Euskotren narrow-gauge local trains in Spain, the Circumvesuviana railway Naples-Pompeii-Sorrento or the Jungfrau line in Switzerland.
Nor do Eurail passes usually cover the private operators who now compete with the state-owned national train operator on a handful or routes, such as Italo high-speed trains in Italy which compete with the national train operator Trenitalia - as a passholder, you have to use Trenitalia. Again, the country-by-country guide gives details of what is and isn't covered in each country.
The best resource for finding train times anywhere in Europe for use with a Eurail pass? That's the excellent German Railways online timetable at www. It covers data for the national rail operators across almost all of Europe. It doesn't hold data for Italo, FEVE, Euskotren, Regiojet, Leo Express or the Circumvesuviana and so on, only for the main national operators, so as a general rule, any train shown in its database can be used with a Eurail pass, although supplements or special fares must be paid on some trains.
It also helpfully says 'please reserve' on trains which have compulsory reservations. More info. Couchettes, 4-berth : Much more room than 6-berth! Using a pass on overnight trains You need to pay a fee to use a couchette or sleeper with your pass, the fee is usually per bed, not per compartment. Berth fees for passholders are listed for specific routes in the Eurail pass reservation page. If you have a flexi-type pass, an overnight train only uses one day on your pass, the day of departure.
Here is the new rule, :which replaced the old 'After ' rule in January A Eurail flexi pass day normally runs from midnight to midnight. But if you board any overnight train before midnight, and do not change trains after midnight , you only need to use one day on a Flexi pass, the day of departure.
It no longer matters what time your sleeper train leaves on day 1, or what time it arrives on day 2. The date you write on your pass is that of day 1. As normal, you get unlimited travel from midnight to midnight on day 1, so you can use other trains on day 1 before boarding your sleeper, all on the same pass day. You can then continue your journey on that direct overnight train until you get off at your destination on Day 2. The only proviso is that you cannot change trains after midnight, and that both the departure day and arrival day must fall within the overall validity period of the pass.
For example, if you wanted to take the Dacia Express leaving Vienna at 42 on the 1st August and arriving Bucharest at on the 2nd August, you'd enter the date of departure, 1st August, in one of the unlimited travel boxes on your pass, and that then covers the whole of the sleeper train journey, even the part on 2nd August, in this example in the afternoon!
And as you'd have unlimited travel all day on 1st August, it would also cover you for any other journeys you wanted to make on that day, for example a preceding journey from Prague to Vienna to connect with the sleeper. On the other hand, if you wanted to take an onward train on 2nd August after alighting from the sleeper, that means using up another travel day on your pass, this time dated 2nd August.
But even if you don't use any other trains on 2nd August, that day of arrival still needs to fall within the overall validity period of your pass, in other words, if you had a days-inmonth flexi pass the 2nd August must be inside the 1 month period, it cannot be Day 32 just outside it.
Got it? When do you need a reservation? For journeys on local, regional or suburban trains For travel on longer-distance trains between cities, here is my rough - but actually pretty accurate - rule of thumb You can just hop on any train without a reservation, sit in any unreserved empty seat, and show your pass when asked by the conductor - even premier high-speed trains like Germany's superb ICE or Austria's railjet trains.
Trains cannot 'sell out'. Passes retain their 'hop on any train' convenience factor in these countries. Remember that with a flexi type pass, an overnight train only uses one pass day, the date of departure, see the explanation here. See the country-by-country guide for details of which trains need a reservation, and what these cost. A first class Pass gives you access to both first and second class compartments on every train.
The decision will not only depend on your budget but also on the travel experience you are looking for. In general, first class offers serenity and quietness, whereas second class offers more of a community travel experience.
Traveling first class usually means spacious, comfortable seats, amenities such as USB-ports, free Wi-Fi and — in some cases — complimentary drinks and meals. Sometimes the perks of traveling first class even start before boarding the train, with access to lounges and priority check-in. However, how luxurious the first class experience will be, differs per country and train company.
Purchased a Eurail First class pass and used it for 10 trips within Germany, Austria and Czech republic. Highly recommended way of travelling.
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