On the Eurail

I'm sure many knows about Eurail. It's supposedly a cheaper ticket for those who want to backpack around Europe. So while I was planning for the 6-weeks long journey in this fantastic continent, I'd decided to get this pass. And boy, I had no regrets. It is a Netherlands-based company, registered in Luxembourg, that sells passes and tickets for European railroads and is owned by a group of European rail carriers and shipping companies.

Basically, it's like a train ticket. And you have many different packages to choose from. 10 days in one month; 15 days in 30 days; Every other day; Continuously. Just saying. And for instance, we opted the 15 days in 30 days for our journey from Vienna to Amsterdam. So it means we are only to travel on 15 separate days within 30 days from the first day we travel using the Eurail ticket. And therefore, you ought to really plan out which date you are to travel. Of course, the different packages comes in different prices; for the fickle minded who have not planned out where and when he wants to travel, the continuous pass would do great, as he gets to travel any day he wanted without limit (i.e. not limited to 15 days only); and therefore, it would be more expensive.

Apart from the duration of travel, there's also the region where one wants to go - select pass, regional pass and global pass. Select pass means one would select a few countries which borders one another during the trip; while global means all the countries in Europe. Many would thought traveling in Europe allows one to go from Czech all the way to Germany and Italy and then France and the UK. But there's a catch. UK is not included in the Global pass! And France doesn't participate in the Select Pass! So while we have decided to only travel through the few countries during our trip, we had to go through Germany to reach Holland on our Select Pass as we could travel through France from Switzerland to the Benelux (Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg). Speaking of which, while we actually opted the Select Pass of 5 bordering countries from Austria to Holland (Austria - Switzerland - Germany - Belgium - Luxembourg - Holland), the three northwestern European countries are counted as one, the Benelux.

Also, there's another catch. While I was trying to explain to a Dutch friend about the train ticket who got so ever interested, he wasn't allowed to purchase it! The Eurail is only available for non-European citizens. But fret not, the locals get to enjoy similar benefits from InterRail.

I have not really calculated if our travel actually was cost effective in the end, but considering we traveled up to few places per day, we figured we should probably make it up to the 1k cost of the tickets in the end. (We purchased the group ticket from Vienna onwards, while I had the Eastern Pass covering Poland, Czech and Hungary earlier costing about 600 euro)

For more information, go ahead to the Eurail main page.