There is no perfect European rail journey planner yet. Usually, the international journey planner of Deutsche Bahn (the German state-owned railway) is very good at finding connections between any two cities in Europe – even if you don’t go via Germany. You can change the duration of transfer (i.e. the minimum amount of time between trains). If you decide to make an overnight stop in a city, it is best to try to look for two separate itineraries with two searches.

Night trains are a comfortable option for long distances. You can find an overview of night trains in Europe on this interactive map.

Where to buy tickets?

If your journey is across several countries, you get to experience the diversity of different European landscapes and cultures on your journey. Before you can do that, however, you also get to experience the difficulties in booking tickets across borders. Unfortunately, there is no single place where you can buy tickets for any pan-European journey. If you book a single train that crosses a border, you can buy the ticket for the entire journey on the website of the train operator. If you have a connecting train in either country, try to book the ticket at the respective company. For example, if you want to go from Berlin (Germany) to Brussles (Belgium) via Cologne (Germany), you can buy a ticket for the whole journey at Deutsche Bahn. We have prepared an example journey which you can find in the PDF at the bottom of this page.

For anything more complex, you will need to split your booking to different tickets which you then buy at the respective website of the operator. You can also try this on journeys that can be booked as one ticket but are very expensive – with splitting tickets, you can sometimes save money.

Also look for your journey at The Man in Seat 61 for information on where to buy tickets for specific routes.

The Interrail Pass for Erasmus+

Interrail now offers a special pass tailored to the needs of Erasmus+ students—the Interrail Pass for Erasmus+! Specifically, the period of validity is six rather than two months, so you can use a single ticket for your out- and inbound journey if you’re only abroad for one semester. They offer two tickets which allow you to travel for four and six entire days within six months respectively.

Keep in mind that this may or may not be cheaper than buying regular tickets, especially if you just want to get to your destination straight away. For many trains, including most high-speed and all night trains, you need to buy an additional reservation, so the price of your journey may be more expensive than the ticket alone. Check out interrail.eu for prices.

This ticket is especially attractive if you want to make stops along the way and/or don’t want to commit to a specific itinerary way in advance. Make sure to check out other (regular) interrail passes too since they may be a better deal in your case.

Ticket booking services

There are services that combine multiple tickets and sell them in one go, most notably raileurope.com and thetrainline.com. At the end of the day, you will still receive multiple tickets, but the platforms allow you to book them in one go – while charging a small fee. This may or may not be worth it for you. However, both sites are not able to sell you tickets for all countries. Most notably, they lack most Scandinavian and Eastern European operators. If you plan to travel in those countries, you probably need to do multiple bookings yourself.

Delayed trains and your rights

Note: This is not legal advice! We have done our best at providing accurate information, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for making sure that you know your rights.

For journeys on one ticket, your passenger rights are protected by CIV: even if your ticket is valid for a specific connection only, you are eligible to take the next train if you miss a train due to delays. However, CIV only applies inside a transportation contract. This means that if you split your ticket, you are not legally protected under CIV should you encounter a delay “between tickets”. This is where the Agreement on Journey Continuation (AJC) comes in: under the condition that the affected train operators are signatories to the agreement (see here for a list and more information), the AJC allows you to take the next train – even if the delayed connection is “between tickets”!

To avoid missed trains and subsequent problems, plan with generous time buffers!