When travelling with your InterRail pass, you can simply hop on and off the majority of trains. There are a number of trains however, that do require a reservation to be made at an extra cost – usually for high-speed, international and night trains.
A few train companies have a year-round limited allocation of seats for InterRail pass holders, including French TGV trains and Thalys. Once this limit has been reached, you’ll need to buy a full-fare ticket. If you book these trains far in advance you should be able to reserve a seat. This is particularly important during the busy summer period (May - September) and school holidays, when Europe is teeming with interrailers and seat allocations for pass holders are fully booked.
"The journey not the arrival matters" T.S. Eliot
Research an alternative route or check out the list below of alternative routes to popular destinations. This means that you use slower connections or that you need to change trains more times, but it will save you valuable spending money and you’ll get to see more new places on your trip, as regional trains make more stops along the way.
Example:
Instead of travelling with the Thalys high-speed train from Paris to Amsterdam in 3½ hours and paying a full-fare ticket (if there is no remaining InterRail seat allocation) why not take our suggested alternative route:
Paris Nord – Amiens – Lille Flandres – Antwerp Centraal – Amsterdam Centraal
Start with a freshly baked croissant for breakfast in Paris, before taking a short train ride to Amiens. Have a coffee in this little French town and make sure you pass by the pretty cathedral. Next stop – Lille Flandres – stretch your legs and grab a snack at this historical station built in 1892, before boarding a train to Belgium’s super cool city of Antwerp. It’s definitely worth spending a few hours taking in some of the city’s beautiful architecture and savouring a delicious lunch, washed down with a refreshing Belgian beer. Later in the afternoon hop back onto the train for the short ride to Amsterdam, just in time for dinner at a canal-side restaurant! What a jam-packed day!
To find alternative routes for your trip, you can use our railway map and take the red lines. Generally speaking, only regional trains run on these routes, which do not require reservations. You can also check out our suggested alternative routes for popular destinations below.
Alternative routes for popular destinations
Please note: All train durations are approximate and include the time it takes to change trains. At some times of the day, a reservation may be recommended for the Schnellzug. The online timetables will indicate when a reservation is recommended (the train details will mention ‘Please reserve’).
Find alternative trains
To find trains which require no reservations follow these steps:
- Visit the Deutsche Bahns train timetable.
- Enter your departure and arrival stations.
- Select ‘All without ICE’. Take a look at this list of trains, which should include train routes with connections to trains that all or mostly do not include trains needing a reservation.
- If you still see trains requiring a reservation you can try selecting ‘only local transport’ which should produce a list of routes with no reservations, however journey times could be longer in this list.
We’d really like to hear about your experiences of limited seat allocation on your InterRail trip. Please email us at experiences@eurail.com. The information you send us will be used to keep our website up-to-date, which will help other travellers get the most out of their InterRail adventure. Unfortunately, it is not possible to reply to your messages, due to the high volume of emails we receive.
