Eurail Global Pass 101

How do we get around Europe by trains?

The Eurail global pass is a pass that allows you to book train rides over Europe. The price differs depending on how many days/ how many places you need to travel over a period of time. All non-european residents can get the global pass, meaning visitors like you and me 🙂 The reason why I wrote this post is to give you an idea how you actually buy the pass and how to use it. (There are many things you must do too before using it!)

How do I get the Global Pass?

I booked my Eurail Global pass online through Klook. Which was 3,000 Php cheaper compared to booking at Eurail.com. However, with Eurail.com, you have the option of pre-activating your pass.

I got my pass at http://www.klook.com. I purchased the 10 days over 2 months pass. They required me to fill in some of my information. At the end of which, I paid online for the Eurail pass at around 24,000 Php. I received notification in my e-mail after this. Now, the pass will be mailed to you. In the Philippines, they required 7 working days from the date of purchase.

Sure enough, one morning, the doorbell rang and I had a package “from China”, I knew it was my klook. My Eurail Global Pass arrived through snail mail!

I have my Global Pass, now what?

The things you have to don’t end there. After getting the Global pass you should visit www.eurail.com to reserve your trains. Or you can download the rail planner from your iPhone, which is also free. Some trains need to be reserved, and reservation is not free. After choosing the train times you want, you need to wait for their confirmation (through your email), which comes in after 3-5 days. After their confirmation you will have to pay for the train reservations online. Note that some tickets are in paper, and could not be just printed from the internet. These will have to be mailed to you by snail mail. Depending on what part of the world you’re from, the number of days before the mail arrives varies. This is the issue I had, because we were leaving in a week. It is also not possible to reserve online for the trains and pay for it when we arrive in europe. So what I did, we went to Europe without our train reservations.

Upon arrival in Europe (we arrived in Berlin) we headed to the Hauptbahnof DB office in Berlin. (Our favorite train hub). First we asked the DB officer to activate our pass. (He’ll stamp it). If you bought your Eurail pass from the eurail site there’s the option of not activating it anymore.

Here is what an activated pass looks like. It’s been stamped!  🙂

We reserved all our trains in less than 30 minutes, we were given the print-outs. The DB officer was very accommodating. The disadvantage however of booking at the time of arrival in Europe is that some of the trains may not be available. (Eurail pass holders are only given a number of slots in the train). Example would be our Brussels to London train, which is all full. So we decided not to use our Eurail pass, but had to buy the expensive Eurostar ticket which cost 127 GBP! (reservation only costs 30 Euros).

Traveling with the Eurail Pass

When you travel with a Eurail pass, make sure you have a pen. You have to fill up the top part with the date of travel. As you will notice there are boxes there, beside “Day” and “Mth”. You have to fill this up, because the ticket person who goes around the trains will punch the some serial number and the date.

Fill up the Day and month carefully in the boxes and the ticket guy goes around the train to punch some numbers.

Now, absolutely make no mistake about this. Think about the date twice before writing! No erasures! Once you enter the wrong date, it will invalidate the box. You use the next box for the correct date.  The number of boxes are finite, and correspond to the number of days you can travel with the Eurail pass. (For me it’s 10 days of travel in a span of 2 months)

Apart from lower part of the pass is the Travel Diary, where you write the station of origin and destination, as follows: (Now these boxes are infinite, and you can even use the back space when all the lines are filled):

Fill up your travel diary as you go around Europe.

Is a Eurail Global Pass worth it?

I calculated the total expenses we had (price of the Eurail pass + reservation fees) and it was roughly less than the expenses we could’ve had with the regular train fares at the time of our booking. What beats this price, however, is when you book your train rides months ahead (when you have super pre-planned your Eurotrip), and train fares are much lower. (Yes it is) So, if you can book ahead (and plan ahead), you will definitely save more money.

In summary, what you should do:

1. Buy a Eurail pass online
2. Wait for the Eurail pass to arrive by snail mail
3. Reserve your trains online
4. Wait for the confirmation of your reservation
5. Pay for the confirmed reservation
6. Wait for your tickets by snail mail
7. Travel to Europe
8. Activate your pass upon arriving (Go to any eurail office with your passport)
9. Travel with your Eurail pass

Instead, what I did:

1. Buy the pass online
2. Waited for the pass to arrive by snail mail
3. Tried to reserve my trains online however could not wait (because it was time to travel)
4. Arrived in Berlin and activated my Eurail pass, and reserved the trains at the same time
5. Traveled using the Eurail pass

Other things/ good to know:

• Some stations, like the Amsterdam Centraal station for example, would require a barcode to open the gate from the terminal (sort of like the metro). We went to the rightmost part where there’s a person you can talk through the microphone, you explain your predicament and he will open the gate for you. However I also found this, in retrospect, on my Eurail pass that there is a barcode when traveling in the Netherlands.

Enjoy Europe!

Xx, Gayle