Laurynwishheart
Traveller
0 comments
Posted 5 years ago
Hello,
This December my boyfriend and I are going to travel to 5 countries mainly in Eastern Europe. This will be our first time independently traveling across Europe and would like advice on what to do.
1) My boyfriend is an exchange student with a visa in France. He started school in September, will he be able to buy an Interrail pass or should he buy an Eurail global pass?
2) What is the best way to travel with night trains? Ideally we are looking at leaving from Nantes to Florence, Next is Budapest, Dubrovnik Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and lastly Greece. We don’t have all of the cities detailed out, but we would like advice on how night trains work with reservations when traveling to each country?
3) when is the best time to buy a Eurail pass? I hear they tend to go on sale, do you know of a time that the sales for the global pass are best?
Thank you for all your help!
Flo
Traveller
10724 comments
Hi!
1) He can buy an Interrail pass since is current residency in France (country of residence = France, visa should be proof (I assume that the visa will also function as residency permit for France?))
2) Only option starting from France is the Thello night train from Paris to Milan and Venice: [ux]https://rail.cc/en/blog/thello-paris-milan-venice[/ux]
I recommend going all the way to Venice; spend the day there and continue to Florence in the evening; alternatively you can of course get off at Verona already and take a train to Florence from there.
From Florence to Budapest your best (and only) bet is to take the Rome - Vienna night train between Florence and Vienna: [ux]https://rail.cc/en/night-train/rome-vienna-nj-40294/93[/ux] then continue from there to Budapest (direct trains at least every two hours).
Then it will get complicated to almost impossible to cover the remaining trip by train.
From Budapest you can still take a day train to Zagreb, then travel to Split overnight (or during the day): [ux]https://rail.cc/en/blog/zagreb-split-night-train[/ux]
From Split you can only go by bus to Dubrovnik, tickets and schedules: [ux]https://rail.shop/getbybus/[/ux] and/or [ux]https://rail.shop/busticket4me/[/ux]
The remaining legs of your trip (Dubrovnik to Mostar, Sarajevo, then across Montenegro/Serbia/Albania/North Macedonia) to Greece have also be done by bus; there are only some parts of the route that can be done by train.
If you have a closer idea of your route we can help with further planning.
3) Nowadays there are numerous sales all over the year but resellers are not allowed to announce these sales in advance. Usually though there are discounts in Autumn and Spring at least.
Anyway, Eurail/Interrail would only help you up until Split and you could easily buy all (most) tickets needed online in advance and probably even be off cheaper than with the Eurail pass.
For booking use "search route" tool and of course if you have questions just ask. :)
Flo