Interrail Route-suggestions please!!

KERPAL

Me and 7 mates are goin interrailling this summer, we have booked flights to Paris and from Nice with about 28 days in between.
So far we have the first few places booked and set:
Paris-2 nights
Amsterdam-3 nights
Berlin-3nights
Prague- 2/3 nights
Krakow- 3/4nights

after that we've got 16 days to get to venice for the nighttrain to Nice.
We are spoilt for choice and thats our main prob at the mo,
can anyone recomend Lake Bled??? any good?
wat about vienna,bratislava etc etc??

Please help us!

hebejebees

Munich and Salzburg are cracking cities not far from each other with great hostels, especially if ye like beer..... well worth a night or more in each if you can swing by them

KERPAL

ye someone said salzburg, will defo check that out.
think munich might be a bit opposite direction, turns out i miscalculated and we only hav 9 days btween krakow and venice, which will be ample time i hope..

Kenny_D

Was told Bratislava isnt great. What about Budapest instead? You can head down there overnight from krakow

mac123

definately do budapest, if you went from budapest to vienna you could stop in brataslava on the way(its very close to vienna). id also recommend croatia if you have time. oh and leave a few extra days to spare as you will probably want to stay in some places longer than planned.
actually id probably go amsterdam to hamburg to berlin to krakow and skip prague completely, worst place i went to when interrailling! maybe try and fit in a music festival aswell, some good ones around!

CantGetNoSleep

GStormcrow wrote: »

Was told Bratislava isnt great. What about Budapest instead? You can head down there overnight from krakow

I'd second that, maybe it was only me but I couldnt stand the place, it was honestly the worst place i've ever been

Talked to my Slovakian friend when I got home and he agreed with me

Kenny_D

Hehe my friend was inter railling for two months and he said he hated Bratislava. He LOVED Prague though...... mac123 what didnt you like about prague? I've heard certain areas can be a bit dodgy but surely they can be avoided. Be interested to hear because I'm starting my inter railling this year in prague (cheapest ryanair flights: 27 eur)

Brimmy

I loved Bratislava. There's absolutely nothing to do there but we found a great little hostel and drink and food are dirt cheap. We were gone for 2 months though so spent the 3 days there just sleeping and drinking and catching some well deserved rest.

Also helped that some great looking Spanish and Italian girls were in the room next to us

KERPAL

ye i think krakow-buda sounds like a very good idea, then i think we are heading to Lake Bled in slovenia, as ive been told its cool.

would 50€ a day be enough to budget on? inlcudin food,accom, drink

Kenny_D

Yeah headin to Lake Bled myself. We're flying into Prague and the places on our list (in no particular order) are:

Krakow
Wroclaw
Cesky Krumlov
Budapest
Munich
Lake Bled
Split
Hvar
Korcula
Dubrovnik
Austria... maybe Innsbruck

If you're going from Budapest to Bled you can get an overnight train as well to Zagreb in Croatia and then there is a shorter second train from there to Bled.

KERPAL

that looks like a pretty savage route, ive been reading up so much and cannot wait till krakow, hear it is amazing..

js another q, can u leave ur rucksacks in lockers in trainstations??? js wonderin coz it wud be very handy.

CantGetNoSleep

KERPAL wrote: »

that looks like a pretty savage route, ive been reading up so much and cannot wait till krakow, hear it is amazing..

js another q, can u leave ur rucksacks in lockers in trainstations??? js wonderin coz it wud be very handy.

You can usually in major train stations, but these lockers will up for big events/festivals etc, it is probably as handy to bring them to your hostel anyway rather than rooting out new clothes etc

mac123

GStormcrow wrote: »

Hehe my friend was inter railling for two months and he said he hated Bratislava. He LOVED Prague though...... mac123 what didnt you like about prague? I've heard certain areas can be a bit dodgy but surely they can be avoided. Be interested to hear because I'm starting my inter railling this year in prague (cheapest ryanair flights: 27 eur)

it just seemed like it was all strip clubs, brothels and stag parties, gets a bit old after a while. it was full of touts tryin to get you in the door the whole time aswell. if its your first stop im sure you will like it but it just doesnt compare to places like krakow and budapest imo. there cheaper, the ppl are friendlier, theres more to do and the nightlife is much better!!
krakow is probably my favourite place in europe, i went back for a little over a week in feb. loads of students there that time of year so there was a pretty cool vibe around the place. its still quality in the summer tho, stay in the hocus pocus hostel if you can!!

KERPAL

we have fiddled a bit with the route
it is now:
paris-amsterdam-berlin-krakow
and from there we will decide on which of the other cities we will go to.
think that is the best thing.

anyone have any budgeting ideas? wud 50euro a day be enuf?

valleyoftheunos

KERPAL wrote: »

we have fiddled a bit with the route
it is now:
paris-amsterdam-berlin-krakow
and from there we will decide on which of the other cities we will go to.
think that is the best thing.

anyone have any budgeting ideas? wud 50euro a day be enuf?

Go to Budapest, we stayed there 5 days and had a blast, loads of interesting stuff to do during the day and mighty craic in the evenings, bit full on though so you need to keep your wits about you a little.

Check out Munich aswell if you can just a night or two would be loads, just to get a taste of German that is very different from Berlin.

We budgeted 30 old irish pounds a day including accomadation and that was 10 years ago so your €50 might be a bit optimistic.

My last bits of advice is to travell over night as much as possible as it saves you the cost of a nights accomdation and you dont waste time on trains.

Finally dont try and stuff to much in, I'd say you have it right, we visited 14 cities in 5 weeks, had a blast but it was all a bit of a blur at times.

KERPAL

valleyoftheunos wrote: »

€50 euro might be a bit optimistic...

Finally dont try and stuff to much in, I'd say you have it right, we visited 14 cities in 5 weeks, had a blast but it was all a bit of a blur at times.

how much do u think then? 60,70? we might take a few nites off... hah...

ye cool, i think buda is bcomin more of a certainty and after that prob prague, vienna and maybe bled.

CantGetNoSleep

KERPAL wrote: »

how much do u think then? 60,70? we might take a few nites off... hah...

ye cool, i think buda is bcomin more of a certainty and after that prob prague, vienna and maybe bled.

I went last year and 50 was ok a day

mac123

KERPAL wrote: »

how much do u think then? 60,70? we might take a few nites off... hah...

ye cool, i think buda is bcomin more of a certainty and after that prob prague, vienna and maybe bled.

spending varies from place to place with eastern europe being a lot cheaper. amsterdam will be the most expensive place that your going to. expect to spend about 80 a day there, and you could easily spend a lot more! maybe check out some campsites cause hostels in the dam are very expensive. krakow and budapest and probably croatia can be done on 30-40 per day. you should also consider cooking for yourself in certain places, will cut down costs a good bit.

KERPAL

is the berlin-krakow nighttrain alri? just heard a few murmurs of discontent with it so wanna double check

RATM

Not sure what time of the summer you're going to be in Budapest but if its around August 12th you'd be absolutely crazy to miss this:

http://www.sziget.hu/festival_english

Over 1000 bands playing on 23 stages, bungy jumps for a score, beer for 1.50. Oh and did I mention that the tickets are only 120 euro for 6 days of music and camping? Get 'em quick they go up to 150 on May 16th !

KERPAL

Sounds amazing RATM but we wont be there for then, have the little matter of our LC results to worry about!!:(

CantGetNoSleep

KERPAL wrote: »

is the berlin-krakow nighttrain alri? just heard a few murmurs of discontent with it so wanna double check

I've heard the same about the Krakow - Prague night train - if I was going on either of these trains i'd make sure I had a lockable cabin.

On some night trains there is a six seater compartment where the seats fold down to make 3 bed, we used these on a few trains last year as there is no extra cost, but the door doesn't lock it just slides open so we were wary of our stuff, as we just left it under the beds in the cabin.

I'd advise you to bring as few valuables as possible. We lost/broke 2 digital cameras and one mp3 player between us last year, and were constantly worrying about valuables. I'd bring maybe one camera between you and very little else

KERPAL

well there will be seven of us for that leg so nigs on my own;)
1 camera per group is a nice idea tho cheers

CantGetNoSleep

Yeah it was really annoying that we didnt have many pictures as we never wanted to bring our cameras on nights out in case we lost them, id just buy a cheap one, remember you will be wearing shorts in most places so you wont always have pockets

raemie21

Looks good Kerpal.
I did the same beginning part a few years back - Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin is a great start. I'd head down to Munich, as another poster said, it is very different to Berlin but fantastic. Prague and Krakow kinda follow over nicely, the Prague-Krackow train is THE one to be worried about - you'll be grand in a group taking turns staying awake but those stories you hear are all true!
Vienna, Salzburg, Budapest big cities too - I mean they're all worth a visit obviously, you have to narrow it down and do another trip next year really. Lake Bled was lovely for us and a much needed break in between the other big cities.
The other place which would be in my top three is Interlaken in Switzerland - only thing is if you're on a tight budget the adventure sports may be out of the question but if there's any chance you could save even to do the canyoning or parachuting, it's the ulitmate backpackers hangout, especially if you're about 18/19 as far as I remember.
Put an Irish flag on the back of your bag so people don't think you're English or American - seriously, works wonders and definitely got us a few perks here and there!
Also, for Eastern European and well, maybe all of them - but buy a flippin' ticket for the tram/metro whatever no matter how small your journey - inspectors quick to charge a 50euro fine and rightly so (we paid 70 euro each in Slovakia, long story about the tickets but yeah, survived on bread and water literally for a few days after to compensate!)

So, have a great time - we're so near all of Europe and it differs so much from country to country, am jealous of you starting over! x

KERPAL

raemie21 wrote: »

Looks good Kerpal.
I did the same beginning part a few years back - Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin is a great start. I'd head down to Munich, as another poster said, it is very different to Berlin but fantastic. Prague and Krakow kinda follow over nicely, the Prague-Krackow train is THE one to be worried about - you'll be grand in a group taking turns staying awake but those stories you hear are all true!
Vienna, Salzburg, Budapest big cities too - I mean they're all worth a visit obviously, you have to narrow it down and do another trip next year really. Lake Bled was lovely for us and a much needed break in between the other big cities.
The other place which would be in my top three is Interlaken in Switzerland - only thing is if you're on a tight budget the adventure sports may be out of the question but if there's any chance you could save even to do the canyoning or parachuting, it's the ulitmate backpackers hangout, especially if you're about 18/19 as far as I remember.
Put an Irish flag on the back of your bag so people don't think you're English or American - seriously, works wonders and definitely got us a few perks here and there!
Also, for Eastern European and well, maybe all of them - but buy a flippin' ticket for the tram/metro whatever no matter how small your journey - inspectors quick to charge a 50euro fine and rightly so (we paid 70 euro each in Slovakia, long story about the tickets but yeah, survived on bread and water literally for a few days after to compensate!)

So, have a great time - we're so near all of Europe and it differs so much from country to country, am jealous of you starting over! x

CHEERS, that clears up alot and even makes me more excited:D