‘Is your backpack full of dreams?’: readers’ Interrail memories

With Interrail hitting 50, our tipsters reminisce over trips from the Arctic to the Algarve, recalling cheesy chat-ups, amazing sights and eccentric route planning

I still have our 1987 copy of Europe by Train. Simple pen and ink maps that had little basis in reality – a bit like the planning my friend and I did. Pre-internet, pre-glasnost, pre-midlife indecision, we naively arrived in Paris and filled in our paper booklet ticket with the first destination, Nice, without considering booking a couchette, or simply a seat. In July. After desperate visits to ticket offices to try to get on any train leaving Paris, we to took the last train of the night, north, to Amsterdam, and thus did the whole adventure back to front. That same friend’s son is about to go on his own Interrail adventure. Apparently he’s got a spreadsheet.
Stephen Bowden