Every summer, hundreds of young people take advantage of their holidays to travel around part of Europe by train, thanks to the Interraila pass that allows you to use the train services of the vast majority of European countries. Created in 1972, it was initially presented as an opportunity for students, generally without great economic capacity, to Travel around the ‘old continent’ at an affordable price.
This August, Andrea L. and Blanca V. have been two of those young people who have ‘taken the plunge’ and decided to take advantage of their summer to experience travelling by train. To their surprise, and that of many other travellers they met, Interrail It is not at all the bargain it seems at first“Not only is it very expensive for potential customers, but it is also very poorly organised. On one occasion we almost got stranded because sometimes the trains separate and it is very difficult to find out,” Petro, an Italian boy who also travelled this summer, told this newspaper.
To begin with, it is not economically profitable at all. “Between one thing and another, and only with the basics, without including whims or extra expenses, We each spent more than 800 euros“, the protagonists tell this newspaper. Some platforms offer trips to Punta Cana for 900 euros per person, all inclusive.
212 euros for a basic pass
The starting point to be able to do the Interrail is get the passwhich only includes train transport. Here the first problem: prices are not affordable for young people. The cheapest one reaches 212 euroswhich only allows you to travel for four days, to be spent over the course of a month and always in second class. These €212 are only enough to visit a maximum of four destinations, since each day of travel is practically a day spent. “More than €200 for four second-class journeys on a train, usually old, is a pretty outrageous price,” says Andrea.
From these 212 euros, all options go up, increasingly with higher prices. The most expensive of all is the three-month pass for continuous travel, which costs 911 euros (717 if you choose to always travel in second class). One of the most popular is the seven-day travel pass to be spent over a month, which costs 286 euros. It should be noted that these passes Only transportation is includedand they don’t even guarantee that you can get on the train, because you always have to make a separate reservation, for which very often you have to pay around 12 euros per person per train.
Andrea and Blanca, cousins, were lucky enough to be able to take advantage of the Summer Youth discount offered by the Ministry of Transport. In this case, you could only choose from a 10-pass over two months. The original price of this modality is always €335but with the Government’s 50% reduction it was reduced to €167.5, even cheaper than the cheapest pass (management costs had to be added, so it was reduced to €172.5 per person).
Although they only had 11 days to travel, they chose this option because it was more cost-effective. “But to travel, it’s not enough to just have the pass. You always have to make the reservation in advance, and in most cases you have to pay for it separately. Between one thing and another, I think that We had to add an extra of about 40 euros“, they calculate.
Their original idea was to take the train from Madrid, “but it was not feasible due to time, since each journey wastes a lot of time and train schedules do not usually coincide, and money.” Therefore, they focused their trip on Hungary and Croatia. So, for those 172 euros, They had to add the round trip flightswhich, despite always choosing the cheapest option, amounted to a total of 228 each: 88 from Madrid to Budapest and 140 from Dubrovnik (Croatia) to Madrid, with a stopover in Paris.
By now, Andrea and Blanca had already accumulated some 442 euros in expenses. “And this is just on transport, the most basic things for a trip like this, and having visited only five cities,” our protagonists reply.
Interrail trains: impossible schedules and chaos
Once the economic issue was resolved, it was time to balancing schedules. “Impossible task”complains María, who did Interrail a couple of years ago, in conversations with this newspaper. Coordinating train schedules is very complicated, because you have to make transfers with many hours of waiting in between. Sometimes these waits force travelers to spend the night.making the journey more expensive. Things get more complicated if you make a night journey, as the transfer is usually in the early hours of the morning and many hours later.
In the case of our protagonists, coordinating schedules was one of the most complicated tasks, and they were finally forced to raise the price of their trips another 260 eurosup to 702 euros, since they had to reserve hostels or rooms in almost all destinations. “In addition, the reservation process was a hassle, because in some cases they only send you a paper copy, there is no option to receive the reservation online, unless you contact the transport company directly,” adds Blanca.
The last essential element of the trip, not counting tours or excursions they took, was the meal. Although they do not have the exact data, They estimate that they spent during those 11 days travel about 100 € per person for food, since in some destinations they were forced to eat out because they did not have a kitchen.
Finally, the other major problem suffered by these cousins, originally from Madrid, was the chaos that each journey entailed.There was no way to find out anything. The inspectors didn’t even know what Interrail was, they gave you contradictory instructions and it was never clear which train you were on or how to activate the pass. You have to leave plenty of time in advance, because you can get into trouble,” add Andrea and Blanca.
“The worst thing is that there were trains that separated at a given moment of the journey and if you didn’t find out, you are stranded in the middle of nowhere“It happened to us on the trip from Budapest to Zagreb, that at the border between countries the train literally split in half: one part continued towards Croatia and the other stayed in Hungary, and there was no one there to explain it to you,” says Blanca.
Having experienced it first hand, and having shared impressions with several travelers, They consider Interrail to be a very good marketing productwith which they sell as a ‘bargain’ something that is not at all, “and even less so for the supposed target audience.” “Still, we loved the trip: we enjoyed it and the countries were beautiful”the two cousins finish with a smile on their faces.
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