Interrailing In Eastern Europe

Posted by David Whitley Jul 10, 2007

If this blog has been a little quiet in the last week or so, there is good reason for it – I’ve been on an interrailing trip through Eastern Europe.

Well, OK, not interrailing in the strictest sense of the word (buying a pass to cover a certain amount of zones, then travelling across Europe by rail for a month), but the thought was there.

A few months ago, I got in touch with the two university friends that I went interrailing with in 2000, and we agreed that we should all go off and try to relive the experience. The plans to do it properly were somewhat scaled down when everyone realised how much it would cost and how much time we’d need to take off work. Nevertheless, we still decided to do it for a week, making a whistle-stop tour of as many countries as possible.

After some frantic guidebook consultation, we decided to take a cheap flight out to Trieste in Italy, and then head north-east. This meant one day in Ljubljana, Slovenia, one day in Zagreb, Croatia, and two days on Lake Balaton in Hungary before flying back to London. That’s a lot of train journeys, inevitably punctuated by lots of nasty hangovers if we do it in the same style as the rather more extensive year 2000 trip.

But, on the flip side, we should get to see a lot of new places on the way. I’ve never been to any of them before – and whilst I’ve spent plenty of time in Italy, this will be my first time in Slovenia, Croatia and Hungary.