As much as we have loved the freedom of our Eurail passes there has been one hassle (which we had been warned about), which has become more of a problem the longer we have been in Europe. The theory with a Eurail pass is that you can just hop on or hop off any train you like – it’s all free once you have paid for the pass. Before we left home we had followed a debate in the travel sections of the paper about Eurail passes and reservations. It seems that on some busy, high-speed routes reservations are now compulsory and even pass holders have to book a seat and pay for a reservation.
For the first 5 weeks in Europe this did not seem to be an issue. The trains were by and large quiet and we did not reserve. Often we were on regional non-reserve trains but even when we were on better trains it did not seem to be an issue that we had not booked…. until Italy.
On a train from Como to Milan we were greeted by a guard, who demanded our reservation. We said “no reservation” and he shook his head, muttered something and stomped off. This was the first time anyone had made an issue of it. Days later on a train from Milan to Florence the same scene played out except this time the guard grumped a phrase that we would hear often and could easily understand “You pay now!”. After punching several numbers into his calculator he came up with the figure of 18 Euros, which we had no choice but to pay.
This happened several times in Italy so we were never sure whether to pay up front for the reservation or risk it and see if we would get a shake of the head or a “ you pay now”. It seemed that every time we reserved a seat the train ended up being empty or the guard forgot to check and every time we didn’t book the train was full and the guard would demand “You pay now!”. One day we caught a train from Rome to Naples, we did reserve and it cost us 40 Euro for a ninety minute trip (ouch) – only to find that those tickets weren’t checked at all and the train was half empty.
There were the couple of trips where we did not book and ended up in an overfull train without a seat. One day Richard enjoyed a couple of hours on the floor. Quite a few times we had to vacate seats for people who had booked (rather embarrassing really). On one occasion we had to give up our seat to a lady and her cat, which obviously did have a reserved seat. The smelly cat sat in its cage on a seat while we sat on a fold-up seat in the hallway.
On Day 78 we were meant to catch an early 7am train from Barcelona across Spain to arrive in San Sebastian late in the afternoon. After considerable discussion we decided to do the right thing and reserve a seat the night before. Barcelona is a very busy station and we waited for an hour in a queue only to be told that the 7am train was fully booked, as was the midday train. After quite an animated discussion in broken English and even more broken Spanish we finally discovered that our only hope was to get the night train. So we booked a sleeper compartment on the train that was to leave at 10pm and arrive in San Sebastian at 7.30 am the following morning.
As a result we found that we had an extra day in Barcelona and feeling slightly at a loose end we found an English language cinema and watched a very bleak Nicole Kidman and Jack Black film to fill in the time before boarding the night train.
However boarding this night train was a very unique experience. This part of Barcelona Station resembled an airport with x-ray machines for all the luggage and a departure lounge. Every ticket and reservation was checked before we were allowed onto the platform so it was very fortunate that Richard had listened to Wendy and that we had a reservation .
On the train we actually enjoyed a very nice double-bunk cabin with its own shower (well actually a trickle but it was warm and wet). We missed seeing the scenery but did arrive in San Sebastian having enjoyed a reasonably good nights sleep.
Sometimes we have chosen our own adventure on this trip, but this sleeper adventure chose us, and we were glad to have experienced another feature of Europe’s train system.
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