The Eurail Pass has been a traveller’s best friend for decades, providing visitors to Europe with the opportunity to explore the continent conveniently. A Eurail Pass also offers exceptional value, especially when making the most of its potential with some strategic planning. Now that we live in the 21st century, Eurail has updated its product with the impressive Eurail Mobile Pass. An entire continent of comfortable First Class travel is now at one’s fingertips. Eurail has upped the convenience factor for rail travel in Europe even further.
Eurail Mobile Pass is so easy to use.
With a smartly designed app for mobile phones. The Rail Planner app makes using the Eurail Pass easy, even for technophobes who reminisce about writing their travel dates on paper. With the Rail Planner app, it is soon revealed that the sentimental among us will still have a souvenir of their travels, a digital one rather than one on paper.
Eurail Passes are available in Australia through Rail Europe; travel agents can access them here. Once a Eurail Pass is purchased and issued a corresponding code, it can be entered into the Rail Planner app and activated immediately or anytime within 11 months of the purchase date. The app, straightforward to navigate, comprises five main sections: Planner, Stations, My Trip, My Pass, and More. The Planner opens a page for doing precisely what it indicates—planning point-to-point travel on a given date at a specific time. Once the point of origin, destination, time, and date are put into the fields on the screen, a list of departure options is presented, showing the number of transfers required, if any, plus the total time of the trip. There is a tab called Options that allows Eurail users to filter results by such criteria as the type of train, number of transfers, and requirement of seat reservation. This last one is handy to avoid the reservation fees that must be paid as supplements to travel on high-speed trains in France, Italy, and Spain, for example, or to pick a train on which a seat can be guaranteed.
First Class with Eurail means space and comfort without hassles.
Selecting a trip by tapping on the preferred departure brings up the next page, which shows the trip in more detail, including the train number. Tap the arrow on the top right of that entry to see the intermediate stops between the point of origin and the destination. The second train and the time between trains are listed if a transfer is required. If happy with the selection, tap the gold Save Journey bar at the bottom of the page. The trip is then saved in the My Trip section of the app, where eventually, all the trips taken will be listed as a digital record of a European adventure in the same way the paper document was. All train trips taken are shown as a list in chronological order; tap on View On Map to see their visual representation or Statistics to see the number of kilometres travelled, the number of trains taken, the number of places visited, the total amount of time spent on trains, and even the amount of CO2 savings over travel by air.
However, adding a selected train journey to My Trip does not commit it to the Pass. The clever design of the app prevents trips from
Niki de St Phalle sculpture in Zurich Central station
being accidentally added; this aspect is essential for travellers using a Pass with a specific number of travel days. Sliding a button to the right will bring up a prompt asking if the trip is to be added to the Pass. The button will turn gold when a trip is added to the My Pass section, where all the information about the user (name, passport number, type of pass, period of validity, etc.) is shown. A single QR code is issued for each day of travel regardless of the number of trains taken or the number of countries visited on that particular day. Like the app’s Planner and My Trip areas, My Pass is available offline, so having an internet connection on the train is unnecessary when showing the QR code to the conductor.
Niki de St Phalle sculpture in Zurich main station
The two other sections of the app are Stations and More. Stations are the one part of the app that does require an internet connection since it constantly updates real-time information. It shows all the trains leaving from a given city at and after a time and date put in by the user. The More section offers all the extra benefits available to Eurail users, including hotel discounts, discounts on other modes of transport (some of which are free), plus a field for making seat reservations for those trains requiring them. Among the thousands of routes available to Eurail Pass users across the continent are some of the most desirable ones, such as Eurostar’s link between London and Paris and scenic trains such as the Golden Pass and Bernina Express in Switzerland.
Especially at a time when European airports are overwhelmed and flights unpredictable, the Eurail Mobile Pass is an ideal tool for exploring Europe in a relaxed, unhurried manner. When adding up the time it takes air passengers to get to an airport, the hours waiting before a flight leaves, the stress and possible delay going through security, the actual flight time, and the time it takes to travel from the arrival airport to the city centre, Eurail users are often already at their destination enjoying a coffee and pastry at a café in Vienna, shopping on Via Veneto in Rome, or checking into the hotel in Paris. Which is the better way to make the most of a European holiday?
Written by Robert La Bua, Global Traveller Deluxe
