A subjective comparison of my interrail destinations

 

In addition to the summary of my 3-month interrail-trip in numbers, I decided to write some more blogposts to answer some of the questions I received several times. This one is about a subjective comparison of the countries I travelled to, both in terms of whether I would recommend travelling to these countries with an Interrail ticket and which aspects made every single country stand out on my trip in its own way.

I didn’t pick out specific countries but created ratings of all countries. In addition, I’m sharing several resources, learnings and tips that can help you plan an Interrail trip more easily.
In order to get the best overview of all my rankings, learnings, foods to eat and places to see without any introduction texts or explanations, you can also check out this spreadsheet directly. I will refer to it a few more times at relevant moments during this blogpost, though :)

Contents:

Interrail possibilities per country

Personal learnings for Interrail trips

What the countries were best for

 

In addition to beautiful views like this, Switzerland has one of the best connected and most reliable train networks in Europe, which mostly does not require seat reservations

 

Interrail possibilities per country

Before my big interrail trip, I didn’t know too much about how well the long-distance trains work in different countries in Europe. I was flying on trips many times before I decided to only travel by plane with a good purpose in the end of the 2019.

Since avoiding flights most of the time, I haven’t missed much but would actually say that I took great trips and experienced places in ways I probably didn’t expect before.

Therefore, I decided to give an overview of all the countries I travelled to on my Interrail trip in 2023 and make a qualitative rating of all the high-speed and regional train networks in these countries. For example, I was very pleased with the high-speed and regional trains in Italy and the possibility to travel without seat reservations in many countries in central Europe.

I even gave the countries as a whole a “school grade” from my personal opinion to make it short.

Which countries allowed for the easiest for travelling with the Interrail ticket

Grade A - Very good and highly recommended: Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, Belgium, Netherlands, Finland

Grade B - Good and recommended: Denmark, Sweden, Slovakia, Hungary, France

Grade C - Sufficient for fairly easy travels with many good connections: Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Estonia

Grade D - Difficult to plan and find good connections: Portugal, Lithuania

Grade E - Limited country accessibility: Latvia, Croatia

Please note that it’s still possible to travel well by train in countries rated with D and E. It only takes a bit more time and effort. In case you’re looking for an easy to plan trip first before making a bigger tour, you might want to focus on the countries which I gave the rating A, B or C. There are also ways to travel by train to Northern Norway or making an Interrail trip to Portugal as final destination.

Or if you wait a few years, the following countries should have better constructed better connections by 2030 or a bit later: Rail Baltica connecting Warsaw, Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, some coastal connections in Spain and a better connection from Madrid to Lisbon.

You can find the complete evaluation table in this spreadsheet.

Screenshot of my spreadsheet with the interrail possibilities per country

There is more helpful information provided by the interrail organization and other sources on these websites:

 

The train connection between Ljubljana and Zagreb is good and pretty, but only few places in Croatia are as well connected as Zagreb

 

Personal learnings for Interrail trips

In case this overview got you in a trip planning mood, I also share a list of my personal learnings and some tips for interrail travels similar to the ones in my previous blogposts on train travels.

During my trip in 2023, I took ca. 100 trains during 3 months and thus had a lot of different experiences, which didn’t always work out exactly as I was hoping to. Whenever something took more time or was more difficult than expected, I reflected what I could have done better, and in other moments my planning in advance helped me to avoid potential problems.

The following list contains some of these thoughts and tips - and also some of the stories where I messed something up or managed to avoid a bigger problem.

  • Try to stick to direct connections whenever possible and avoid too many changes on a day. On the way from Ljubljana to Pula I ended up booking a Flixbus, because I was naively expecting that a train connection with 3 changes of less than 20min each would work out. The first change only had 7 min buffer time and was the second of a “only twice per day” connection. So when my first train was delayed 10 min, I knew I need to find an alternative spontaneously.

  • Plan trips with reservations without changes or with a decent buffer time to avoid missing connections with reservations due to small delays, e.g. I decided to take a regional connection from Tours on the way from Bordeaux to Lyon instead of going via Paris, because if I missed the second TGV from Paris, I wouldn’t have had a seat reservation for the next one anymore.

  • When changing trains, best make sure it's a frequently used route and it's unlikely to get stuck somewhere due to a delay. Try to avoid changing to connections that only go once or twice per day unless you wouldn’t mind getting stuck in the place of the change.

  • During high-season, it’s best to book mandatory seat reservations 2 weeks in advance to make sure that one is definitely still available. If required, rather take an unfavorable connection instead of not being able to take any in the end as happened to me when I wanted to book the next trip once I arrived in Madrid.

  • During off-season, it’s possible to book some seat reservations at local providers or directly at the train station to save some money on the booking fees, though.

  • In case you want to gamble on booking a route with seat reservations late, best be flexible to wait a few days for the next free connection or make sure there is an alternative slower route.

  • When scheduling changes, rather take the first train to the final place to change in order to safely make more distance before the next train may have issues. I could have avoided ca. 2 hours delay when heading from Paris to Barcelona in case I would have taken the night train to the final destination. The train I changed to and which was supposed to take me to Spain, stopped before the border where I could also have gotten of the night train.

  • When travelling solo, I preferred staying at rather small hostels with a small bar and planned activities, because the bigger ones that are more like a hotel got too anonymous in my opinion. E.g. at “Combo Torino” the breakfast places were so big that every solo traveller or group would sit on a table by themselves instead of having to sit next to other travellers and talk to them.

  • In case you would like to meet hostel roomies, better arrive early enough so people in dorms don't sleep yet (before 9-10pm).

  • In case you have a train to reach on the next day, plan the day and important means of transport grossly ahead. I had to rush a fair bit in Gothenborg, because I missed the ferry I wanted to take back from an island to the mainland before the next seat reservation.

  • Also take time for wellbeing and physical exercises even when travelling on a long trip (> 2 weeks) on which you want to see as many places and experience as much as possible. It helped me to keep up the energy for my fully packed 3-month trip.

And in case you’re planning to travel by train without an interrail ticket, the learnings from our trip to Northern Norway could be helpful for you, too.

 

I enjoyed such views out of the train window even more when I didn’t think about how I would get to the next destination because the exact train I’m sitting on just takes me there (Côte d’Azur)

 

What the countries were best for

The following part describes how I personally felt about my trip.

Many people asked me which country I liked best after my 3-month Interrail trip in 2023. On the one hand, I couldn’t really answer the question because no place seemed better than the others, but on the other hand I also didn’t want to directly answer such a question.

No country should be generally positioned above another one in my opinion, because all the ones I visited all have beautiful places, delicious foods and unique experiences to offer. Hence, I started to create a personal summary with what I personally liked best about each country I visited.

The following list is a very personal summary of solely this trip including aspects like where I enjoyed the best dancing, where I felt at home again and where I had the largest reunion with old friends.

 

Almost midnight sun over Trondheim. The city where I lived and studied for one year

 

What I personally liked best about every country I visited during this trip:

Denmark: Highest social trust

Norway: Feeling like a home to me (since the semesters I studied there)

Sweden: High living standards and the diversity of the friends I visited there

Finland: Most interesting language

Estonia: Most digitalized country

Latvia: Most interesting fun facts

Lithuania: Most surprising with its mix of modern and historical architecture

Poland: Most important history lesson

Czech Republic: Best architecture photography opportunities

Austria: Most beautiful white buildings

Slovakia: Best for a short party trip

Hungary: Most typical experience with the local family of a friend

Slovenia: Cutest capital city

Croatia: Beautiful, rugged coastline

Italy: Tastiest food

Vatican: Most impressive church

France: Largest reunion with old friends

Monaco: Fanciest place

Spain: Best dancing

Portugal: Best seafood

Switzerland: Most beautiful train rides (also excluding the glacier express)

Belgium: Largest beer diversity

Netherlands: Most friends in a small area easily to visit by train


This overview and all other gathered information about learnings, ratings, foods to try and places to see are also in this spreadsheet .

To check out the map and statistics of my trip in 2023, just refer to the “next” blogpost linked below at the bottom right of this page.

And as an add-on only for this blogpost, I also share the list of the 3 most impressive train stations I’ve been at:

  1. Milano Centrale (cover photo and below)

  2. Antwerpen-Centraal

  3. Porto São Bento

The massive hallways and roofs are very impressive in the Milano Centrale station from 1931

Feedback and questions

In case you have any feedback or questions going deeper into the topic, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m happy to help when someone is interested in trying a more sustainable way of traveling by train around Europe :)

 
Niklas Hermes-BöhlefeldComment