My 2012 Inter-Railing Itinerary | Notes from the Archive
my itinerary, some top tips, & a cost breakdown
*SHARED TO THE BLOG IN SEPTEMBER 2025 // POST UPDATED NOVEMBER 2025
ARCHIVE / aar•kive / (noun): a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people.
Welcome to a new Notes from the Archive post, a series in which I am sharing some of my old & well documented travel notes to the blog. I’ve been keeping detailed notes and journals from my travels abroad long before I ever started sharing that content to this little corner of the internet. For some reason, it only dawned on me recently that, although not as thorough as my note-taking and journaling of today, this information could a. be useful to someone out there planning a trip, b. offer a glimpse into my travel days of yore, or c. just be fun for me to relive briefly under the pretense of being useful — so I figured why not share them here!
If you have stumbled across this post on a deep-dive through the blog archives, hello! I have done my darndest to make sure every piece of information shared here is just as relevant today as it was the day it was scrawled in my journal. I would also like to take a moment here to apologise in advance for any poor-quality photographs. You have been warned.
Today’s Notes from the Archive post is all about My 2012 Inter-Railing Itinerary. I was 18-years old back in 2012, and I went inter-railing with my then-boyfriend. Over the course of our trip, we hit eleven cities, nine different countries, and spent many hours on many different trains.
Listed below is all the legible information I could garner from my old journal, broken down into the following categories: my itinerary / some inter-railing top tips / and my inter-railing cost breakdown. I have plans to share a more detailed breakdown of each of the cities listed below, with this post being more of a general overview of the trip as a whole.
Enjoy, friends!
my inter-railing itinerary
day 1: london, uk
fly from Dublin → London Gatwick, 1-hour 30-minutes
spend the day exploring London
sleep in London Gatwick
READ MORE: A Layover in London, England
day 2-6: split, croatia
fly from London Gatwick → Split, 2-hours 20-minutes
base ourselves in Split Old Town
spend the days exploring Split
day trip from Split → Hvar by ferry, 2-hours
overnight train to Zagreb, 9-hours 10-minutes
READ MORE: Four Days in Split, Croatia // An Afternoon on Hvar, Croatia
day 7-9: zagreb, croatia
wake up in Zagreb
base ourselves just off Zagreb main square
spend the days exploring Zagreb
READ MORE: 48 Hours in Zagreb, Croatia
day 9-11: budapest, hungary
train from Zagreb → Budapest, 6-hours 50-minutes
base ourselves in Pest, along the UNESCO Andrassy Avenue
spend the days exploring Budapest
READ MORE: Three Days in Budapest, Hungary
day 11: bratislava, slovakia
train from Budapest → Bratislava, 3-hours
spend the day exploring Bratislava Old Town
overnight train from Bratislava → Krakow, 9-hours 30-minutes
READ MORE: An Afternoon in Bratislava, Slovakia
day 12-15: kraków, poland
wake up in Kraków
base ourselves centrally, near Wawel Castle
spend the days exploring Kraków
day trip from Krakow → Auschwitz by bus, 1-hour 20-minutes
READ MORE: Three Days in Kraków, Poland
day 15-18: prague, czech republic
train from Krakow → Katowice → Prague, 6-hours 50-minutes
accidentally base ourselves in the red light district for one night, before relocating to Prague Old Town the next morning
spend the days exploring Prague
READ MORE: 72 Hours in Prague, Czech Republic
day 18-21: berlin, germany
train from Prague → Berlin, 4-hours 47-minutes
base ourselves in East Berlin
spend the days exploring Berlin
READ MORE: Two Days in Berlin, Germany
day 21-26: munich, germany
train from Berlin → Munich, 6-hours 40-minutes
base ourselves with family in Buchenau, Fürstenfeldbruck
day trip into Munich, 32-minutes by train
day trip from Munich → Salzburg by train, 1-hour 40-minutes
day trip from Munich → Mannheim → Paris by train, 6-hours 45-minutes
day trip from Buchenau → Stegen am Ammersee & Dießen am Ammersee by car, 40-minutes
fly from Munich → Dublin, 2-hours 35-minutes
READ MORE: Unwinding in Munich, Germany (coming soon!) // An Afternoon in Salzburg (coming soon!) // 7 Hours in Paris, France (coming soon!)
some inter-railing top tips
I bought a ‘Youth Interrail Flexi Pass for 7 days’ ticket, which allows you to travel on any 7-days within a 1-month period across the 33 participating European countries. We ordered our tickets online well in advance — I think through this website — and found the experience rather painless.
journey-wise, we pre-booked all of our routes and trains to ensure that we had nice seats etc. I understand this wouldn’t work for the spontaneous traveler, but it took some of the stress out of it for me. Pro tip: some trains, such as overnight ones, require a pre-booked reservation, so it’s definitely something to look into. More info about reservations here.
similarly, we also pre-booked all of our hostels for the trip. Again, it wouldn’t suit the spontaneous, go-with-the-flow traveler — but that was not me. I believe we used Hostelworld for most of our accommodation research.
prior to the trip, I bought an International Student Identity Card. I already had my college student card, obvz, but I’d read online that those wouldn’t necessarily be accepted in other countries. Shoe-string budget in mind, I didn’t want to risk not being charged student prices, and the ISIC card worked every single time! Link here to the website.
I also made sure to have my European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) — previously called the E111 card— with me for my travels, which entitles travelers to free public healthcare in the country they’re visiting. More info on that here.
my inter-railing cost breakdown
Early in the planning stages, we made a daily budget for each city. Of course, there were some days where the costs were unavoidably higher than we expected — London, for instance, blew my budget way out of the park — but there were also some days where we came in delightfully below budget, so it all kind of balanced out.
In case you’re interested, here’s the final cost breakdown of my inter-railing trip:
TRAVEL EXPENSES:
FLIGHTS x3: €311.17
INTER-RAILING TICKET: €266
SEAT RESERVATIONS: €35
TOTAL CITY EXPENSES:
x1 DAY IN LONDON: €85
x4 DAYS IN SPLIT (including HVAR): €96.35
x3 DAYS IN ZAGREB: €38.24
x3 DAYS IN BUDAPEST: €57.03
x1 DAY IN BRATISLAVA: €19.40
x3 DAYS IN KRAKOW: €84.05
x3 DAYS IN PRAGUE: €74.46
x3 DAYS IN BERLIN: €93.57
x5 DAYS IN MUNICH (including SALZBURG & PARIS): €91.41
FINAL TOTAL FOR 26-DAYS: €1,269.52
And there we have it: My 2012 Inter-Railing Itinerary! I hope you enjoyed this entry into the Notes from the Archive series! Individual city guides coming soon, promise!
Ciao for now,
Vicki xo
*Date of trip: 13th May - 7th June, 2012.*
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