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anonymous
Traveller
2469 comments

Posted 14 years ago

Hi I'm curious as to whether I can use Interrail or Eurail.

I'm living in Holland with an American passport. I've been here since end of August and want to use an Interrail during the end of February (almost exactly 6 months). I also have a dutch student visa but it wasn't issued to me until October. Can I use my housing agreement to prove residency for 6 months?

or is the passport stamp all the matters?
I don't know if this is an issue but my passport stamp is from Copenhagen because I had a connecting flight to Amsterdam. Will this cause any problems proving residency within Holland? I'm not sure how strictly these rules are enforced...

I plan to go visit Prague, Vienna, and Budapest. Do the ticket controllers always ask for passport and identification or do they just want to see you have your interrail ticket?? And if the documentation I have is not enough, what happens? Do I get fined?

Thanks.

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Peter
Traveller
9333 comments

replied 14 years ago

Hi ...

The official words are like this concerning your proof of residency (6-months-residency in Europe):
[quote]... your Passport, travel ID or residency card should show this (the 6-months-residency). You can prove your current address by showing governmental certificates, bank receipts, telephone bills or student visa.[/quote]

If the train staff checks your ticket and see it isn't valid (less than 6 months residency), you will normally have to leave the train and pay a fee as you travelled without a valid ticket. Depending of the staff they can even keep your ticket - so that you are somewhere in Europe without a ticket.

Interrail or Eurail: [u]https://rail.cc/en/interrail-rules[/u]
Country of residence: [u]https://rail.cc/en/how-to-interrail[/u]

Peter :)

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Head
Traveller
101 comments

replied 14 years ago

During my many InterRail trips, I was only once asked to show passport on a train - when a whole crowd of ticket inspectors captured S-Bahn going to Zurich airport ) they actually caught many people without tickets or with wrong tickets there )

By the way, when they sell InterRail to a overseas national residing in Europe - what do they write in the upper right corner of the ticket? country of citizenship or country of current residence?

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Peter
Traveller
9333 comments

replied 14 years ago

Hi Head ...

They write in the upper corner the country of residence.
That's also the reason why you have to show together with your passport (which is not from the country which is printed in the corner) some official documents. So that you can proof:

[b]Non-European-Passport[/b] [b]+[/b] [b]Official documents[/b] (visa, residency permit for more than 6 months, ...) [b]=[/b] [b]valid InterRail Pass[/b]

Peter :)