Interrail

In the 80's you could buy an Interrail ticket for £160 and travel across Western Europe for a month taking sleeper trains and sleeping on beaches and camping in between. Trips from Norway to Greece, or circuits from the Benelux and France, through Germany and Italy and down to very hot Southern Spain and across to Morocco were possible in a month.

But what can you do now?

Tickets are now split into the Interrail Global Pass and the Interrail One Country pass. Unlike the 80's, now everyone can Interrail - youth, adult, senior and family. Tickets can be 1st class or 2nd class, and you can choose from 4 travel days up to 3 months continuous (as of 2026). The pass continues to evolve. You can still get a paper pass or use a digital pass in the Interrail app.

The closest equivalent to the 80's ticket is the one-month continuous Youth Global Pass. Prices change each year, so check the current fare – and think about whether you really need to travel every day. If you'll only be on the train on some days of the month, a pass with a set number of travel days is usually much cheaper. There are plenty of options to choose from.

There are fewer sleeper trains now, especially in countries like France - the TGV's are so fast now that journey times have been greatly reduced - so unless you were travelling from the far north of Europe to the south you wouldn't be on the train that long.

Another major change is in booking where to stay. In the 80's you just rocked up at whatever city or location you were heading to, and found a cheap room or headed to a youth hostel or campsite. Now with the smartphone you can book ahead at the last minute if there is availability, so you know where you are going to stay every night before you get there. You've seen pictures, read all about it, know the quality of the wifi etc.

You still need to watch out for trains that have additional reservation fee's. The Interrail app tells you which trains need reservations and which reservations are optional. Some trains don't require reservations.

Also, your country of residence didn't used to be covered by the Interrail ticket - so if you were coming from the UK you would have to get to one of the Channel ferries and pay for the ferry on top of the ticket, albeit at a reduced price. Now, with a Global Pass, you can make one outbound journey from your country of residence and one inbound journey back to it. For example, a UK resident can use the Pass for a journey from home to a port, airport or border, including travelling by Eurostar, although reservations are required on Eurostar. These outbound and inbound journeys use travel days from your Pass; they are not additional travel days.

Another option is the one country pass. If you are happy flying out to one country and then travelling round it in depth, you can now do this for some countries. Prices vary for different countries, check the Interrail website for the latest information.

So these are the logistics, the experience though is still much the same, except the trains are more advanced, and the headache of finding accommodation as mentioned is much reduced.

Being able to travel from Scandinavia as far as Turkey or Southern Spain for a reasonable price is still amazing. Now you can go into many more countries. Central and Eastern Europe have opened up, it's not just a quick trip into West Berlin or a beeline down through Yugoslavia to Greece. Many of the countries of this part of Europe can be explored in depth now.

If it's your first time in Europe, that taste of the many and varied cultures of the different European countries condensed into one month, sets you up for further trips to the countries you liked the most.

The amazing experience of one day being in a capital city of one country, the next day being in the capital of its neighbour, then if you need some country time heading next to a national park, or the alps, or the beach is still there. And you can decide this pretty much on the fly day by day, as you meet people they may suggest places you never heard of and you can make a side trip out there.

Interrail is still an amazing trip for anyone wanting to explore Europe. True, air travel can be cheaper for some routes, but for an on the ground experience, Interrail is still great. For the young - finding their way through Europe, or for older people wishing to do it all again, it's still to be recommended, and the options now are wider than they were back then. Central Europe here I come ...