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777
Traveller
1 comments

Posted 8 months ago

Hello everyone,
I have a france Germany pass, as I understood it i can travel on any train both in France and Germany. I recently started my journey by going in Germany and now on the app it said that i have used 1 out of 2 of the inbound/outbound. Does it mean that if i go back in France i cannot go in Germany again?
I'm a bit confused because i had planned to get back in France before continuing my trip.

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Arend7
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594 comments

replied 8 months ago

The France-Germany pass is initiated by the French and German government and has nothing to do with Interrail. Looks like you bought an Interrail Global pass with has nothing to do with that France-Germany pass.

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MisterSteve
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922 comments

replied 8 months ago

This is a bit of a mess! The Pass has two websites, one in France and one in Germany which are supposed to be the same thing in the two languages - but the french version seems to be missing the rules!! The German version has this rule in the FAQs

"5. Kann man mehrfach zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich pendeln?
Nein, einer der sieben Reisetage muss genutzt werden, um das Wohnsitzland zu verlassen, ein weiterer, um dahin zurückzukehren."

"can you shuttle multiple times between Germany and France? No, one of the 7 travel days must be used to leave the home country and another to return"

This is basically the inbound/outbound rule of Global Interrail. The pass is issued via the Interrail App as a type of Interrail Pass and the travel has to be booked via the App, which will block a second attempt to leave home country. The political comments when the pass was announced stated that the intention was to have young people visit and spend time in the other country - to which they have added travel in home country to the border.

In reality, if they wanted to encourage such movement it would have made more sense to sort out the long standing problems of getting cross border reservations and many internal reservations on SNCF if you are not in France!!! They have also missed the fact that a lot of sensible connections between the two countries may involve travel within Belgium, Luxembourg or Basel.

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777
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replied 8 months ago

Thank you for clearing this mess for me!