This is one of the most complicated aspects of this whole Longest journey project: ticketing!

I am making the journey using an Interrail pass that makes most sense for a journey like this – in terms of overall cost, but also in terms of flexibility. With Interrail, if a train breaks down or a connection is missed, I can either hop on the next one or, in some cases, simply play a little for a seat reservation on alternative trains. With regular tickets, especially those that are only valid on that train mentioned on the ticket (Zugbindung in German), passengers can often be left in complicated situations at European borders when switching from one operator to another.

But I also wanted to ask myself the question: how good value is Interrail?

I set about trying to find out.

So I looked up the cost of individual tickets on the same day – 28 days ahead of my departure – as I booked my own Interrail reservations, and, as well as I could assembled these into a table.

It must also be said that before even looking at tickets, I did what I always do: planned out my route using bahn.de – Deutsche Bahn’s website remains the best tool for rail trip planning, Europe wide. Once my route was set, I could then work out how to buy the tickets.

Ticket costs – regular tickets

These ticket prices were looked up from the start of the journey onwards, checking how many trains onwards tickets could then be bought. A price is shown for each booking – so for example €54.23 is the price for Haparanda – Boden – Umeå, two trains booked in one transaction from Norrtåg. The total is 11 transactions resulting in receiving 11 tickets, booked from 9 websites (in the cases of VR (Kemijärvi – Kemi, Kemi – Haparanda) and Renfe (Lyon – Barcelona, Madrid – Badajoz) it was impossible to book both trains needed in the same transaction). There was then 1 transaction each on the sites of Norrtåg, SJ, DSB, ÖBB, SNCF, Iryo and CP.

It is possible that booking this in some other order or combination, or using some third party ticketing platforms (Railfinder, Trainline, Omio etc.) might have resulted in fewer transactions, and possibly a fractionally lower price. But however you would book it, a passenger would be left without passenger rights at Haparanda, one of Umeå/Stockholm, one of København/Hamburg/Offenburg, Lyon, Barcelona, Madrid and Badajoz.

Interrail reservation costs

Interrail pass costs

Current costs of Interrail passes:

Interrail pass costs + reservation costs

Savings using Interrail compared to regular tickets

These savings for those under 26 are no doubt slightly exaggerated as I was unable to account for any youth reductions on regular tickets (there was a limit to how thoroughly I could research all of this!) and the savings are undoubtedly limited by 1 of the 5 days having only 1 cheap train (Kemijärvi – Kemi), and booking ahead making Madrid – Lagos very good value on regular trains as well. But even so, a 25-32% saving is not bad at all.

And overall to those who bemoan rail being bad value, doing this with Interrail and covering around 6200 route-km for between €380 and €460 in reasonable comfort strikes me as very reasonable!

Notes

Where prices were in DKK or SEK these were converted to EUR at the Interbank rate on the day of booking/checking, 7th August 2026. Interrail reservation charges include booking fees where these are unavoidable.
* – no 1st class seats on 274, price of 2nd class seat listed
** – at the time of booking 28 days ahead no price difference between 1 person in a shared compartment 2nd class (without a shower) and 1 person in a shared compartment 1st class (with a shower)
*** – ÖBB NightJet mini compartment for 1 person, like a pod hotel
§ – there is some dispute as to whether reservations are needed on long distance services in Finland with Interrail. VR’s call centre told me that no, for these two trains, no reservation is necessary.
§§ – København – Hamburg can be reserved, but reservations are optional. The cheapest option is €3 / 74Kč from cd.cz
§§§ – Interrail reservations in Portugal are not available digitally, only in stations. This cost does not include my friend in Lisboa having to send paper tickets to me by courier!