Inter-Rail

[Dick Knights Mumm]

I did Inter-Rail with a mate in I think, 1973. I was sixteen and we went around Europe sleeping on the trains and stations, living on a budget of £1 a day. The Inter-Rail ticket cost £33 as I remember. I can't imagine letting my lad at 16 do the same thing. We were simply broke for four weeks. I can't remember drinking much beer. Great days though.

At the last minute my mates parents asked if their son could go with us. We tried to refuse. After five days we realised why he had no mates. And we deliberately lost him at the Spanish border (they had trains with a different gauge). We hid in a compartment and watched him walk up and down the platform. Cruel wasn't it ? Kids eh ?

Anyone else done the Inter-Rail thing ?

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Mum, Inter-railing is the meaning of life - think I paid around £180 for a ticket in the eary 90s which got me loved up in Paris, stoned to high heaven in Amsterdam, pissed as a fart in Prague (for the princely sum of a few quid), scratching 'BHAFC' into the seats at the Nou Camp, standing on the terraces of FC Koln in Germany, going to a footie match somewhere in Copenhagen as well as touring the Carlsberg factory and supping the ale for free, St Tropez, Rome, Venice, Berlin and too many other venues and experiences to mention. If you've never inter-railed it really is the dogs and would recommend it to anyone, just make sure you go with someone who you're not going to throw out of the train window after a week or two.

 

[Highfields Seagull]

Did a month round Europe in summer 2001. It was slightly more expensive than £33, but still pretty cheap for a month's holiday.

Tried to get overnight trains mostly, to save on accommodation costs and so that days weren't wasted travelling from place to place.

Stayed mainly in youth hostels and very cheap B & Bs. Though the best place we stayed in was Krakow. The accommodation was just as cheap as everywhere else, but it must have been a fancy hotel in Poland - it had a porter to carry our bags and looked pretty swanky. I bet we looked a right state when we turned up there.

For anyone thinking of doing it, I'd recommend it. Even if you're a bit aprehensive, with the wonders of the internet you can book your first couple of accommodations in advance to get you going. You can even do this for places later on in the trip if you know you're going to be in a certain place at a certian time (e.g. we knew we'd be in Budapest for the Hungarian Grand Prix).

My advice - do it if you can.

 

[CHAPPERS]

I did it in 99. 220 quids for the month. Bllinding month, drunk literally every day. Managed to spend over a grand but we only actually camped out once and by Greece had got bored of youth hostels so stayed in two star hotels and tried to arrange travelling at night to save on accomodation.

Highlights of the trip were..

Barcelona (everything about the place)
The Colloseum
Seeing Lazio win the league at the Olympic Stadium
Seeing my mate get strip searched as we got caught taking puff into Italy
Staying in hotel on a Greek Island for 5 quid a night, the hotel had a pool with a bar next to it and overlooked a bay with the most incredible view i've ever seen
Running through Vienna trying to find a cashpoint to pay for a taxi to get to the station to catch a train the Amsterdam on the last day of our tickets
Amsterdam getting stoned


Overall its a thoroughly good way to spend a month with a few choice mates.

 

[CHAPPERS]

Stayed mainly in youth hostels and very cheap B & Bs. Though the best place we stayed in was Krakow. The accommodation was just as cheap as everywhere else, but it must have been a fancy hotel in Poland - it had a porter to carry our bags and looked pretty swanky. I bet we looked a right state when we turned up there.

Krakow is the f***ing bollox, a blinding place, been there 3 times now, once on my interail trip.

 

[Italiaseagull]

Seeing Lazio win the league at the Olympic Stadium

I'm still green with envy about this Chappers!

 

[Man of Harveys]

Inter-railed twice -absolutely brilliant, both times with NSC's own hairy Danish pastry Gluteus Maximus.

Would love to do that again, even at this age. Berlin just after the wall came down, Barcelona just before the Olympics, getting thrown out of pubs in the Algarve, playing the guitar in Florence, Corfu, rat-arsed on Metaxa in Yugoslavia with a load of Austrian soldiers on leave, sitting in Lisbon with about three quid to your name until you get home, losing control of ones guts on a train in Nuernberg after a visit to a Czech brewery and throwing the dirty shorts off the train. No travel insurance, not enough money, no emergency credit cards. The best holidays ever.

 

[Lord Bracknell]

Long distance European rail journeys can be amazing experiences. After about 16 hours on a train, things start to happen. Going somewhere becomes irrelevant. Being on the train is the thing.

My first experience of this was Calais - Naples on a school trip at the age of 16, when I discovered that Europeans really do smell of garlic. The most memorable bit was the journey home, the day after a three day strike on the Italian railways. What this meant was that the trains were completely overcrowded and we had to squat in a corridor for 24 hours, sleeping as best we could and stretching legs every time the train stopped at a station.

But this didn't put me off. Subsequent great train journeys include London to Athens on the non-luxurious version of the Orient Express (change at Belgrade). Why do Serbian grandmothers travel with live poultry?

Another Rome to London trip in the company of a British Airways stewardess and an Irish Catholic priest, straight out of theological college, on his way to take up his first appointment in a parish in South London. "They never told me that there were black people living in Brixton".

London - Harwich - Amsterdam - Berlin - Warsaw - Budapest - Prague (where all my luggage got stolen).

And the best of the lot... Moscow to Omsk in Siberia (not on the Trans-Siberian Express, but on the alternative, cheaper route, via Kazakhstan). Three days, with food supplied by a wonderful Russian woman who took meal orders and used the 20 minute breaks at stations to go shopping for whatever people wanted her to cook. Although many of the Russians on the train had brought their own fresh vegetables. One discovery - unlimited quantities of Moldovan brandy "can cause drowsiness".

Things happen on trains. You'll meet people you'll never see again. And you'll be in their company long enough to get to know them well. Highly recommended.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

It never even occurred to us to go to Eastern Europe, I don't even know that was an option. We mainly did Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, but they seemed exotic then. In Spain we didn't go to Torremolinos or anywhere, but there was free wine from those watering can things whenever we ate. For a few days we split up and I went around on my own around northern Italy, my mate was in an on-going legover situation. It was just a great experience. I remeber we decided not to go to Scandinavia as it those days Brighton was wall-to-wall EF students with blond hair. Marvellous.

 

[Gluteus Maximus]

Ah indeed. Being asked to give blood in the back of a van just outside Naples station, mad Spanish train guard's sleep deprivation tactics between Madrid and Lisbon, campsite toilets, falling down cavernous sewer holes in Corfu roads at 2 in the morning, eating nothing but bread and Dan Cakes for 4 weeks. Seeing Man of Harveys lose weight.
Halcyon days.

 

[Dick Knights Mumm]

Now we know you are making it all up .....

 

[Man of Harveys]

It's true, most of it went in one go at Nuremberg station. The messy event was promptly dubbed the "Nuremberg trial".

Gluteus also got hit by a car in Corfu, so he fell down a sewer and got hit by a car in two days. Thankfully his protective body hair prevented any serious injury.