Same for Germany, we have the 63€/Month Deutschlandticket. It's only valid for regional trains (but also all local buses, subway and tram systems) though, so for long distance travel you have to switch trains a lot.

Quite a few countries (France, Spain, Italy for starters) require seat reservations in advance for any long-distance/high-speed trains now. And worse, they have a quota for passes, so even if the train has space, you might not be able to reserve a seat and therefore get on the train. A real shame as it makes it far less flexible than before.

Yes. The app makes it really easy to do that. In our last trip we did it a few times.

But, as you get older, there's a certain joy in making plans in advance.

I used to do this but with Flixbuses and Ryanair. Back then one could fly from Frankfurt am Main to Milan for 15 euros.

For faster/intercity trains, it is still like that in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, UK, Ireland, Denmark, Norway and most of central and eastern Europe [0]

France, Italy, Spain, Portugal & Sweden require seat reservations, as do most international services

Making reservations varies from easy to a complete pain

[0] https://www.seat61.com/how-to-use-an-interrail-pass.htm

Yes

https://youth.europa.eu/discovereu_en

For small trips through France you'll probably get cheaper without this pass. When I'm in vacation I do 2-3 days in a city than move on. If I exclude Milano-Lyon, I don't think I ever payed more than 40€ through France and I did Lyon, Paris, Rennes, Brest, Nantes, Bordeaux and a few other cities. The only thing is that I book way in advance.

When I returned from Germany, two months ago, the lady next to me was amazed that I payed Munchen-Verona 37€ while she did 100+.

In the UK I've never seen a train open its doors directly to the tracks. We also have lots of warning not to cross the tracks except by bridge or tunnel.

"Was a little strange seeing cables dripping down from the ceiling"

The whole text is full of these weird takes on the most banal things.

> Maybe something like that should exist on global scale.

Would certainly change things, e.g. the US looked far less glamorous when I actually visited it*, but there's a lot more variation in certain parts of the world than between nearby parts of continental Europe, e.g. Nairobi not only had some very nice looking newly built stuff (the first pictures for the city on Google Maps seem to be glamour shots), but also this: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Nairobi,+Kenya/@-1.2442837,...

* landed at SFO, even just the literal bed in the hotel room was larger than some entire rooms I've stayed in, then I look out of the windows and think "1980s parody of Butlins in 1960" ("Hi-de-Hi!" was part of my childhood TV).

Prediction: You haven't trained a lot outside of Europe if you think the training experience in Germany would be "your worst train experience".

I remember from my interrail planning that big parts of Europe are not nice to visit due to too slow trains. I heard EU wants to fix this though

German train delays are not a big blocker because you normally plan a whole day train travel to go from A to B and being one or two hours late is not too bad.

Yeah saw that one coming from a mile.

Actually no. German trains are often late, true, but outside of that its actually very nice. There are a lots of lines and lots of collections. The only time its a bad idea is if you have a real time constraints.

Germany is quite predictable compared to some other countries.

Is it Interrail if it's just in one country? Isn't that just a normal rail pass then? :P

The passes were about €500 each for first class. Each reservation was €3-€15. The overnight ferry was about €100 each.

How do you handle seat reservation refunds? That was our most annoying experience with the Interrail app - a booking fee on top of the reservation, but little support when those trains were delayed or cancelled.

"more or less dead when I was old enough in the early 00s"

Think it was just your peer group then. It's still very much a thing. Did it in my youth twice, once at 16 years once at 18 around 2010. I know my cousin who is >10 years younger than me also did it sometime in the last 5 years. Among my peers it was fairly common but it was not done by the majority. If I'd have to guess I'd say 10-20% did it at some point towards the end of highschool.

We also did party trips but that's just a different kind of trip and doesn't really mean the other thing is dead.

No, I just imagined the trip…

Yes, very much still a thing. We saw Interrail travellers of all ages. Lots of students going on a big adventure - but a decent number of more experienced travellers seeing the sights.

When I graduated uni in the late 2010s it was still quite popular. Budget airlines have made trips to southern Europe a lot more popular/feasible for a boozy weekend with mates, but for people who want to go backpacking for a month or two Interrail still made a lot of sense, at that time at least.

I've used Interrail every time I want to travel a longer distance across Europe by train. Spares me some of the stress of dealing with interruptions since I can often just hop on the next train. Unless it's fully booked...

I did it in 2010 and I think the majority of my friends have done it over the years. At least around that time it still seemed very much alive for people in the UK.

Interrail is sometimes cheaper, specially as a student. Otherwise it’s usually still cheaper if you want to go to multiple stops

746,000 Interrail passes sold in 2024

https://www.interrail.com/en/magazine/did-you-know/rail-reca...