Ahoy lads, I recently joined this community and before hand I would like to thank the men behind this project.
Now, for the real reason why I created this thread, I'm turning 22 years old this year and all I can say is...I've traveled around the world via plane and the closest I've used to a train was my dads car, yes I used to be a posh kid. Long story short, I'm no longer under my parents guardianship, which means I can't affoard high class plane tickets.
I have a girlfriend living in Sweden and I thought with LowCost flights I could easily go visit her but either I'm bad at searching or it's really costy(mainly to Sweden, because other countries have great offers) so then I found out about InterRails and I have a question, if I'm not interested in actually traveling around Europe and just meet her, should I buy an InterRail ticket or should I just buy a ticket 'straight'(I know there are no such thing as straight with trains) to Sweden? I'm looking for the cheapest yet efficient way to reach Sweden, nothing else
If it matters, She's from Lulea.
I currently live in Spain but I'm originally from The UK.

Hej,

some questions for the beginning.
- What is your current country of residence? This is important as whether to get a Spanish or a UK InterRail pass http://www.raildude.com/en/interrail-co ... dence.html
- Do you want to go to Lulea one way or back again? How long do you want to be en route? Have a look at the different InterRail Global Pass options http://www.raildude.com/en/interrail-global-pass

A direct route from Barcelona to Lulea could look like this:

Barcelona Sants 0916 - 1200 Cerbere
Cerbere 1235 - 1510 Montpellier
Montpellier 1525 - 1848 Paris Lyon TGV, 6€
Paris Est 2005 - 0837 Hamburg CNL, 27,50€
Hamburg 0928 - 1414 Kobenhavn
Kobenhavn 1629 - 2150 Stockholm Snabbtag, 7€
Stockholm 2250 - 1120 Lulea NT, 3€

With regular tickets booked well in advance (about 5 weeks) I came up with a total of ~250€ for the whole trip, using couchette accomodation on the Paris - Hamburg night train and regular seats on the Stockholm - Lulea night train.
With the 5in10 InterRail ticket (175€) you would need to add the above mentioned reservation costs, so the total would be around 220€...cheaper than regular tickets bought in advance plus you would still have some travel days left which you could for instance use for a trip to Gällivare - Kiruna - Narvik on the famous Malmbana or to Gälivare - Östersund with Inlandsbana together with your friend. Moreover you are more flexible in case you miss one of your connections...this is a possibility which could be particularly annoying on such a long trip. And the regular tickets bought in advance are usually valid only for the train booked and cannot be refunded.

For more basic information about InterRail have a look here http://www.raildude.com/en/interrail-first-time

And if you want to support our work at Raildude we would be happy if you'd buy your IR pass in our shop. Thank you.


Flo

flow wrote:Hej,

some questions for the beginning.
- What is your current country of residence? This is important as whether to get a Spanish or a UK InterRail pass http://www.raildude.com/en/interrail-co ... dence.html
- Do you want to go to Lulea one way or back again? How long do you want to be en route?

And if you want to support our work at Raildude we would be happy if you'd buy your IR pass in our shop. Thank you.


Flo

I would leave in Spain and I would like to go to Lulea and be there for about 2 weeks. One thing, let's assume I buy the 15 days ticket, does that mean if I leave Spain on X day, the tickets will only be valid X+the next 15 days or does that mean I'll be able to travel for 15 days whenever I want? Because let's assume I want to be there for 2 weeks, I would need to buy the 22 days ticket?
an of course I'll buy the ticket from hair, RailDude is cheap and the helpful community is a plus, I'm not even sure why this isn't a huge community, it's really a great website so I'll be sure to refer to others aswell.

Hej,

what is still unclear is your country of residence. I assume it is Spain, in that case you would need an extra regular ticket (you get 35% discount though) for the part from Barcelona to the French border (Cerbere).

If you buy the 15 days ticket, it is valid from, say, 3rd April, 0000 until 17th April, 2359. A One Month ticket would be valid from 3rd April until 2nd May.
If you want to stay in Lulea for about two weeks, you should get the 10in22 ticket which would be even more bang for the buck.

Thanks for supporting our project and the community, it is always good to get some positive feedback!

Just let me know if you need further informations regarding planning the trip etc...


Flo

flow wrote:Hej,

what is still unclear is your country of residence. I assume it is Spain, in that case you would need an extra regular ticket (you get 35% discount though) for the part from Barcelona to the French border (Cerbere).

If you buy the 15 days ticket, it is valid from, say, 3rd April, 0000 until 17th April, 2359. A One Month ticket would be valid from 3rd April until 2nd May.
If you want to stay in Lulea for about two weeks, you should get the 10in22 ticket which would be even more bang for the buck.

Thanks for supporting our project and the community, it is always good to get some positive feedback!

Just let me know if you need further informations regarding planning the trip etc...


Flo

Thanks for your help. I was just wondering, why is it mandatory to buy the tickets 2 or 3 months earlier?

WorldTraveler wrote: I was just wondering, why is it mandatory to buy the tickets 2 or 3 months earlier?

flow wrote:

WorldTraveler wrote: I was just wondering, why is it mandatory to buy the tickets 2 or 3 months earlier?

I read somewhere(Not sure if it was on this site) you would need to buy the tickets like 2 or 3(depending on the site) months before.
I was thinking about going bringing a mate with me but we read somewhere you would need to buy tickets afew months before traveling(or did I ready wrong?) so he gave up ahah.

No,

if you buy the ticket online via our shop we recommend to book it at least one week in advance with standard shipping, or two or three days with express shipping.

Maybe you confounded that with the maximum for which you can buy the ticket in advance which is three months.


Flo

flow wrote:No,

if you buy the ticket online via our shop we recommend to book it at least one week in advance with standard shipping, or two or three days with express shipping.

Maybe you confounded that with the maximum for which you can buy the ticket in advance which is three months.


Flo

Oh, might have been that ahaha, thanks again brother. I'm only going in August so plenty of time to plan everything

Fine.

Just post here if you need further advice.