alt Hacker NewsInterrail used to be more popular years ago among young adults who had just finished high school. I did it with a few friends at the time, and it was an incredible experience of self-reliance, patience and just complete freedom.
My best memory is sleeping under the stars outside the train station of Biarritz, France, on a mild summer night next to the Atlantic Ocean. Such a refreshing sleep.
The next night we did the same, sleeping under the stars outside the train station of Modane, France, very high up in the Alps. Definitely didn't sleep as well with the cold air and weird looks.
Replies
How long was this experience? I have a sense that sleeping outdoors as part of an adventure is getting tarnished by the homelessness and mental health crisis (… which is a separate issue that can’t be appropriately addressed here).
I live in a seasonal touristy area and I have to do double-takes as to whether someone is transient, or is just backpacking.
The implication here is personal safety. The homeless individual could be unpredictable due to mental health, whereas the backpacker is likely to be neutral.
A guy told me once that he used his interrail ticket to sleep in the trains and save the cost of a hotel. He'd spend half the night going to a random destination and the other half back. The issue he faced once was that some border guard recognized him on the way back and would not believe that he wasn't involved in some sort of smuggling.
I think it was much more popular before budget airlines became so big in Europe. When you can fly to most European cities for < €50 at anytime of the year taking lots of weekend breaks is affordable even for students.
On the contrary, it has never been more popular. Numbers are not that easy to come by but there were 750k tickets sold in 2024. In 1991 400k tickets were sold, the highest since the inception of interrail, but they rest of the 90s saw a slump in ticket sales with most years under 200k.
So Interrail is either close to double as, or even several times more, popular than when you did your trip.
My daughter (now 20) did something similar last summer: Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, Malmö, Hamburg, Amsterdam, and Paris in a couple of weeks, IIRC.
She left with a friend, who headed home after a few days, so she ended up traveling solo for most of the trip. She stayed in hostels (bar in Paris) and ate basically only TooGoodToGo food [0] to save €. She made it home in one piece, with the biggest smile on her face.
[0] https://www.toogoodtogo.com/