When I started high school, it was clear to me from the beginning that I wanted to take a gap year after graduating. I wanted to travel and discover the world. But where to? With what? How long? And with whom? I asked myself all these questions over a few years and I kept changing my mind. Initially, I wanted to do a volunteer stay in Greece with turtles. But since I don’t see so much of the world, I became aware of Interrail shortly afterwards via Tiktok. Interrail has been around forever. It is a ticket that can be used in several or limited countries, depending on the situation, to travel unlimited trains in one day. With the Interrail, I was able to fulfill my dream of seeing several countries and doing so sustainably. Now the question was where to go. Since I have always been very interested in the Scandinavian countries, I thought I could take this chance to travel to the countries.

But how does it all actually work? I would like to explain that to you now. At first you are a bit intimidated by the whole topic. You may even be planning a trip alone for the first time and don’t know from start to finish what you need for it. But it’s not that difficult!

All you need is money and a laptop. And now I will explain the next few steps to you:

1. 1. Spontaneity: Think about whether you want to plan everything in advance, or whether you want to travel spontaneously. Because this will have an impact on your Interrail ticket. Personally, I love to plan & like to be tied to a fixed route. That’s why I planned my whole route from start to finish. But that doesn’t mean that you have to do it that way.
   2. Time & Money: Before you start planning, you should be aware that even though this is budget traveling, there are still a lot of costs. Because the Interrail ticket is not exactly cheap & you have to eat every day & sometimes you might want to treat yourself to something else like bread and pasta. You should also be aware of how much time you want to and can invest in this trip. Or possibly discuss the whole thing with a travel partner.
   3. Countries: If you want to travel more like I did, you can now think about the countries you want to visit. Of course, the whole thing can also be done by spontaneous people, but rather rough & not so detailed. I would recommend deciding which countries you would like to travel to. Maybe you already have some places on your bucket list & can embed the whole thing in your plan. Of course, you should still note that the places and countries may not be infinitely far apart, because train journeys take longer than expected (;
   4. Route: Once you have chosen your countries, you can start planning your route. Sometimes Tiktok or Pinterest helps to find beautiful places. But I mostly traveled to the capitals of the countries. Google maps also helped me to estimate how far apart the individual cities are & whether you might have to make a stopover.
   5. Interrailapp: If you now know your route roughly, I recommend downloading the “Railplanner” app from Interrail to your mobile phone. Here you can now see the train connections that you can take from city to city. Make sure that you don’t take a date that is too far in the future, otherwise the app doesn’t have any data yet.
   6. Train journeys: Railplanner shows you the different train connections. Make sure that you don’t have too many changes and maybe you can take the shortest trip. Because only 7 hours in one train is hell. Depending on the luggage, transfers are also very tedious. We had a few times more than 7h train ride and up to 12h, if you can shorten this time by making various stops, this is of course an advantage. What is also possible are night trains, but I only recommend that if you want to invest the money in a place to sleep. Because without it, the next day in the city will be uncomfortable.
   7. After you know what the route should look like, you still have to decide how many days you want to spend in the individual cities. Tip: don’t plan too many days. In most cities, 1-2 days are enough if you don’t want to visit any special museums or amusement parks.
   8. Now you’re ready. You know where you want to go, how long you want to stay in one place and how long the journey will take in total. The only thing you need now for the train rides is the Interrail ticket. If you stick to your plan, you can calculate the individual train journeys and buy a ticket to go with them. If you want to travel spontaneously and don’t know exactly how many days you actively need the Interrail ticket. I recommend an “unlimited” monthly ticket.
   9. Interrailticket function: After you have decided on a ticket and bought it, you can link it in your Railplanner app and enter the start date. Shortly before the train rides, you have to activate the train ride so that you have a valid train ticket. You can then show these to the inspector via the app. Always have your identity card with you, as this is sometimes required during the check.

Your trip is now planned, the Interrail ticket is activated and ready. But what happens now? What do I need to pack? Should I book hostels, hotels or AirBnB’s? How much money do I need per day and what else is there to consider? I will answer all these things in my next blog so that you don’t make the same mistakes as I did! We’ll continue here next week(: