Giving up on 2022 Interrailing

The last time I went to the Netherlands, I flew. I felt bad about it! But it is a lot quicker. And I didn't have an awful lot of time. If you spend all your time in a train you barely see the people you are travelling for. But I wanted to stop flying. And not flying, in my situation, means Eurostar.

During the previous citizens’ assembly I spoke with my friend Caro, who is German and therefore regularly travels there. She said it was a lot cheaper to buy an Interrail ticket. With that ticket you can then reserve seats on the Eurostar. It sounded like a good idea!

Soon I looked at a potential trip, checked how expensive it was, and then checked what I would pay for an Interrail ticket that covers the same period. And the difference was indeed considerable! So I bought a ticket. And then had to actually sort out the seat reservations.

It sounds so simple. There is a page where you can do just that: make seat reservations for the Eurostar from the Interrail website. And getting to the Netherlands didn't seem to be a problem! But I also need to get back. And there the trouble started.

All was fine between Amsterdam and Brussels. But I also need to get from Brussels to London! And that just seemed to be a problem. Every possible itinerary I tried, I could not book a seat on that stretch on that website. And the site does have a button with "more information" you can click, and that gives you a different site where you might be able to sort that, but it quickly descends into a lot of faff. I did find, in the end, a place where in theory I could make a reservation for that stretch, but it required the number of my Interrail pass. Fair enough. But the panel indicated it needed to be a paper pass! And I had a digital one. So it wouldn’t work. This was getting really frustrating. I later just tried different dates to see if maybe that helped. But it didn’t. I gave up.

An Interrail pass is valid for a year, so I figured I could just try again, in spring or summer. Surely it should be possible! And in the worst case I could just go interrailing in Britain. Pop over to Scotland or something! 

For Christmas, I admit I just booked flights. How can I get to the Netherlands otherwise if I can’t travel between Brussels and London? This is a total nuisance. But at least I’ll be getting there! 

The issue