Interrail 2015 - Introduction

I recently finished school. What do you do after you finish school?

You go as far away from it as possible. You travel around. Explore the world. Have fun. Enjoy your freedom.

So here´s what I did. This will be the epic tale of an unprecedented adventure. A modern version of the Odyssee, just with less problems, shorter and witout boats. But nevertheless epic, heroic and tense.

My girlfriend an me decided to do an Interrail-Trip. The Interrail Global-Pass allows you to travel around in Europe by train with one ticket. In some cases you have to buy a reservation, but overall you just need that one ticket. We decided to buy the one for 22 days. There are also other options (click here for further information).

Once we had pinned that down, we went on to prepare the other things.

1 Planning the route
We planned the route for our trip. This took up some time, because we initially thought of going to Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) after we finished Italy as first country, but the train connections down there seem to be very bad and really slow. It would have been just travelling instead of really being anywhere. So we cut that out and laid our route directly to France after our last Italian stop, Milano.
Also London was high on our "Must-Visit-List". At first. Then we discovered that we´d have to pay nearly 250 Euros each for only the train to London. The same amount for the train from London to the next stop. Pretty ridiculous, especially with the budget of a poor teenager. So London got cut out aswell. But we already knew our stops before and after that (Paris and Amsterdam) and decided to visit Brussls instead.
The final route looked like this:

1. Venice (01/07 - 03/07)
2. Rome (03/07 - 05/07)
3. Florence (05/07 - 07/07)
4. Milano (07/07 - 08/07)
5. Nice (08/07 - 10/07)
6. Marseille (10/07 - 12/07)
7. Lyon (12/07 - 14/07)
8. Paris (14/07 - 17/07)
9. Brussels (17/07 - 20/07)
10. Amsterdam (20/07 - 22/07)

Our route
(I had to screenshot this map and draw the route myself because Google Maps doesn´t support more than 10 waypoints for some absurd reason)

It´s mostly Italy and France, but that was already our first plan, so we were fine with that.

2 Planning the stays
We decided I´d would be the best, if we spent our nights in youth hostels. They are in every bigger city, sometimes even two or more and they are fairly cheap. We registered ourself in the Hostelling-International network. If you are under 26 years of age the membership costs you 7 Euros per year. In most countries we visited, a membership was obligatory for staying in the hostels. You can get them directly in the hostels or order it at home before your trip. Membership-prices are a bit cheaper, it will make up for the 7 Euros easily.

The membershipcard from Hostelling Internationa

We also had to book regular hotels in Venice and Milano, because we were late and the youth hostels were already booked out for the time of our stay. But it wasn´t much trouble, the booking process was equally comfortable.

3 Packaging

When you go on an epic adventure like we did, you need something to transport your stuff. For us, the best option was to get a backpack. A really big backpack. You get pretty good advice on what you really need in specialised shops, like sportshops. I bought my backpack here.


                     

And, I gotta say it was the perfect choice. All of my stuff fit in easily (I even had space left), it was a great feeling when having it on and you don´t ever have to worry about your damn suitcase being to big or losing on of those tiny wheels and having to carry it in a very uncomfortable way afterwards. 

  

Another great thing I took with me was a smaller backpack, which you can fold in itself to make it transportable requiring very little space. You can use this for daily trips to cities, so you don´t always have to carry all your stuff with you, but still can bring a bottle of water and a rainjacket. One of the best gadgets you can get for a journey like this.

For clothes, I think I was fine. I had enough of everything. But that is all personal preference.
What else did I take with me? Smartphone, camera, MP3-Player, powerchargers, some cash of course, stuff for hygiene and health. Also make sure to bring your ID, very important.


So, yeah, that was the preparation for the trip. Easy as pie. Not really in reality, especially if it´s your first time doing such a long trip for yourself. But it´s a very useful experience, you leran a lot about organizing different things at a time, dealing with customer service and planning something, that won´t work out the way you imagined it. You have to really pt some work into it, but then finally everything will be done and you can be very proud and just enjoy the awesome trip.
Which will bring up new problems.
But that is subject to future posts.
Stay tuned!