Eurail/Interrail Rail Planner 4+

My wife and I both use the app on our iPhones to support our Interrail travels. For the most part, it does what it promises (within the limits made clear at the outset).

However, there are a few areas where the app can be a bit flaky. Some examples:

On my device, the My Trip section always scrolls to the current travelling day. On my wife’s, it loads and stays at the top, so she has to find the day herself.

When I have to display my pass, it often comes up with an instruction to add a journey, rather than ‘show pass’ even though I have added journeys for that day (and sometimes even shown it already). There is no easy way to break this cycle, apart from force-quitting the app and hoping that it works the next time (often it doesn’t). Obviously this is quite stressful when a ticket inspector needs to see the pass. My wife never has this problem with the app on her device.

The widget feature works for my wife, but not for me. I have added the widget to my home screen, but the ‘three dot’ menu on ‘My Trip’ does not offer an option to add it to the widget, and there is no possibility to swipe at all.

The app works well for central Europe, where you don’t need reservations or anything else. If you plan to go into any area with redervations on trains it is useless - to the point of being detrimental to the journey. It tells you that reservations are required and then that nothing is available anymore. Going to the individual train operators’ websites you can easily make the same reservations this app said were unavailable. Trying to make reservations on the interrail website when coming from the app, you have to re-enter all the journey and time details, even though the app is brazen enough to warn you that you will need to re-enter the times if you rather click on the link to make your reservation with CD directly (for example). For connections around Sofia/Greece generally it just doesn’t show any results, so you’ll have to McGyver those areas using all other websites you might be lucky enough to find. Even though I’ve set the app to also show bus and ferry connections it doesn’t, and rather says that there aren’t any connections whatever time you might search for - even though the pdf map you can download from Interrail’s website will show that there is a train+bus-connection between for example Sofia and Thessaloniki, or Athens and the port at Patras. In summary, it is completely useless for any area with seat reservations, and completely useless for south-eastern Europe.

This is my third Interrail Global Pass even at 2 months off 70 years of age I still enjoy the exciting experience of train travel. We all know about island hopping on a boat, well why not try country hopping by train. You get to see so much scenery when going from country to country. My advice is first class, yes you pay extra, but when it comes to night travel the first class sleeper or Cushette as we know it, is one step beyond when it comes to the facilities provided:- 2 bunk beds, a table section, wardrobe, toilet and toiletries, a shower cubical and of corse electric socket for mobile phone charging or other devices. Have no fear you will have a Knock on your door with a free coffee etc, half an hour before your final stop. Of course the sleeper/ Cushette is at extra cost but well worth it when travelling through the night. Who wants to sit on a train seat trying to sleep and look after your belongings/baggage. Last thing, quite a few train journeys require a reservation booking, which you also pay for, I have found this useful my self. Last thing not all journeys are first class, mainly in the poorer countries. I think that is everything covered.
Happy travels
F J