Inter railing

[churley1]

I'll always give the same advice when it comes to Inter-Railing.

1. Don't buy the monthly passes unless you're absolutely certain to get value for money for them. If you have the time, research each journey individually.

2. It might be cheaper to fly. I went from Budapest to Krakow last September for £11 one way with Ryanair and it took 35 minutes!

3. Eastern Europe is a lot cheaper than Western Europe, obviously. There's more tourist stuff in the likes of Paris than Budapest but the nightlife in the latter is better, IMO.

4. Start your journey in the city furthest away by flying, that way you can get back by following a route which takes you closes to home. Interrail passes don't include your country of residence so you could start in Bratislava for example, finish in Paris and then take a cheap single with a low-cost airline to get home.

5. Don't bother with taxi's from airports, they're normally always accessible by public transport and you'll pay a premium otherwise. Bus/train stations however are more difficult so do your research.

6. Finally, don't get bogged down to a specific plan. Last summer I met some fantastic people in Berlin who were going to Prague but as I'd booked all my tickets already, I couldn't simply join them. I was going to Budapest and didn't enjoy myself because of many reasons and I always regretted not being able to simply pack up and head to Prague.

 

[Colossal Squid]

I spent a fantastic month touring Europe's railways a few years ago and for what it's worth my route was as follows:

Ferry from Newhaven to Dieppe and then a train to Paris --> Heidelberg --> Belgrade --> Istanbul --> Plovdiv --> Skopje --> Sarajevo --> Zagreb --> Rijeka --> Pula --> Munich --> Berlin --> Copenhagen and then a flight home to Gatwick.

Being able to get all the way to Istanbul by train seems almost unreal and my first leg of the journey meant I spent a LOT of time travelling, so once I got to Istanbul I took a lot longer on my route back so as to be able to enjoy places along the way.

As has been previously touched upon the money you spend in Southern and Eastern Europe is significantly less than what you need to fork out for in the West and therefore your money will go an awful lot further if you head East/South East. As I started my journey in France and Germany I had to really watch what I was spending whereas by the time I had reached Serbia it felt like money wasn't a worry anymore. In most of the former Yugoslavia you can actually enjoy a nice meal out with booze for much less than you'd pay closer to home. In Skopje for instance, you don't need to spend more than a fiver to get a substantial meat heavy platter washed down with a few local brews in a decent restaurant. Similarly Sarajevo and Belgrade are dirt cheap (compared to what we're used to) as is most of Bulgaria.

I absolutely loved touring the Balkans although I perhaps have a more than healthy interest in the former Yugoslavia which maybe made it more exciting for me than it would the average European traveller. But given the number of different countries you can cover relatively quickly and the low cost of enjoying yourself in these places, I'd recommend this region to anybody. Western Europe is packed full of things to see and do BUT being that much more developed and costly made it less appealing to me. Particularly given as a trip to Paris or Amsterdam is rarely much more than £50 on a plane anyway.

Should you be considering a route along the Balkan lines let me warn you that the Balkan Express service, which goes from Belgrade all the way to Istanbul via Sofia and Plovdiv in Bulgaria really has to be experienced to be believed. The journey is scheduled to take 24 hours (so pay the small supplement for a couchette carriage or you'll have no chance of sleeping) however that really is only a guideline timeframe and it's so unreliable that you can expect it to take much longer. When I travelled it actually took a total of 32 hours, including a 3 hour stop in rural Serbia thanks to the engine breaking down. The carriages make First Capital Connect trains look positively palatial so be prepared to be slumming it. I ended up bonding with my fellow travellers over cheap Serbian beer which helped the journey go much quicker and we were fairly lucky that the unscheduled stop in the Serbian backwaters gave us a chance to hop off onto the tracks and find a local mini mart to stock up on cheap as chips 2 litre bottles of local lager. However, there are other opportunities if your train is lucky enough to have no unscheduled stops. I recall one enthusiastic guard collected money from everyone in our carriage to jump off at Sofia and buy bucketloads of surprisingly good Bulgarian beer. Obviously he made a tidy profit from us but the sums involved were so tiny that it was still incredibly bargainous.

Generally speaking the trains in that part of the world are shit, when compared to the space age Deutsche Barn machines or those in Scandinavia, however they carry a certain charm and as long as you're not expecting much they can be enjoyed for what they are, a useful if unreliable way to cover large distances. Of all the trains I used in the Balkans I never encountered any locals and they were entirely populated by backpackers and other foreign tourists. Apparently the locals don't consider trains anywhere near reliable or useful enough and everyone travels by the much faster bus system instead. But don't let this put you off. It's actually a lot of fun being among fellow travelling types. I even came across a fellow Brightonian on my epic 32 hour Balkan Express journey.

I made use of a lot of night trains to save a bit on accommodation and to cover large distances whilst snoozing although to be honest, hosteling around the former Yugoslav nations is so cheap that it's not really worth worrying about the cost. But it's worth noting that a lot of these trains aren't exactly conducive to getting any kip. Aside from the fact that the rickety old carriages aren't always all that comfortable, there can be quite a lot of interruptions as other passengers get on and off and officious border patrols conduct their frequent passport checks (the Turks in particular are most determined not to allow anyone to slip through the net into or out of their country). But again, this all adds to the experience if you ask me.

I'd also point out that I didn't make too many plans and mostly played it by ear along the way, which I think allowed for a less stressful journey overall. Sometimes you may wish to spend longer than you expected in one destination or somebody may make a recommendation along the way that convinces you to alter your plans, and given the less than reliable nature of some of the rail services, it can be sensible not relying on being anywhere within a specific timeframe. I actually extended my stay in Skopje at the last minute after making friends with some locals and getting involved in the bonkers street party celebrations following the Macedonian basketball team's surprise success against Lithuania in the Eurobasket tournament. When something like that happens it's great not having anywhere to be which could potentially curtail your participation in such impromptu wild celebrations.

Finally, make sure you check out www.raildude.com which is absolutely packed with useful info such as timetables, supplements payable and guides to the many different stations you'll encounter. Whilst you might think most stations are easy enough to work out, places like Belgrade and Sofia, with their bewildering language and undecipherable syrillic alphabet can be quite daunting if you're not prepared.

Go with an open mind and a desire for adventure and you'll have an amazing time.

 

[stripeyshark]

Cheers guys, spoken to mates and thinking of a route along the lines of...

Paris -> Barcelona -> Marseille -> Nice -> Venice -> Prague -> Berlin -> Somewhere in Western Germany -> Amsterdam -> Brussels

Anywhere in between that you'd recommend, things to do in the cities etc?

The cologne/Bonn area of western Germany was lovely during the World Cup. The Rhineland is very picturesque.