I lied (taken from my blog, suitcasesoiree.com)

I rescind all that I said about the EuRail pass. I decided, after strenuous research involving checking the prices on all point-to-point train tickets based on my potential itinerary, that the pass, in fact, will save me money.

European train tickets have gone up in recent years, especially in Western Europe. While a few select routes within certain countries are still pretty cheap, once you start crossing borders, or going from one country’s major city to another (e.g. Munich to Berlin), the tickets add up very quickly - enough to make your head spin. Even though the pass does NOT account for reservation fees (ranging from 5 to 15 euro) and you will have to pay an additional fee for high speed and sleeper trains, it appears that the pass still saves you money. Plus, if not one commit to a set itinerary (I plead guilty), the pass acts as a ticket without being subject to fare hikes (minus any reservation fee you might have to pay), it gives you more flexibility (or so I am PRAYING), and can be used in conjunction with point to point tickets (for example, if you’re insane like me, and you want to go from Sofia, Bulgaria (a country not on the pass) to Zagreb, Croatia (on the pass), you can buy a ticket from Sofia to the Serbian border (typically pretty cheap) and from the Croatian border to Zagreb, the pass covers you).

Of course, the major downside to the pass is I now feel committed to taking trains. If on the off-chance that I do find a cheap airfare to save me time, I will likely take it but will feel frustrated. However, I think after about 7 train rides, the pass will have paid for itself, so all-in-all, not a bad deal.

So which pass did I choose? I will tell you but do not rely on this for your future trips (I was hoping that someone would give me a magic answer also, but life just isn’t that easy). I bought the 2 month consecutive global pass. The reason is because by the time I start using the trains (from Barcelona), I will have 2 months left of travel (prior to that, I will be flying to Dublin, London, and Barcelona). Within those months, I can travel unlimited to any of the approved 21 global countries (for a list of “global” pass countries, please see http://www.eurail.com/eurail-global-pass-countries). Of the countries I plan to visit, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Poland are not included (also please note that if a train route goes through a non-included country (e.g. from Budapest to Krakow, not only is Poland not included, but neither is Slovakia!). I decided that this was okay because of the point-to-point border tickets described above.

Of course, we will see how all of these “plans” pan out in practice, considering that I might change my route, I might nix countries all together if I decide to spend more time in certain places than others, and I just might end up hitch-hiking or shacking up with royalty somewhere, in which case, PRIVATE JETS.

Check out www.suitcasesoiree.tumblr.com to see the whole story.