Interrailing - trying to get to either Moscow or Istanbul from London

dropinthocean

Basically title says it all. I'm starting from London in late may or early June and want to either get to Istanbul or to Moscow.

I've never used an interrail ticket before so I don't know what the story is with it.
I know you have to reserve seats but how expensive is it, and what if you cant get seats etc? It says that they only hold a limited number of seats for interrail passengers. So should I get the ticket ASAP so I can start reserving the trains now. I can imagine that the paris-munich train would be particularly popular.

Plan.
Get a 5 out of 10 ticket, staying a day or two in each city.
Pay on the eurostar from London to Paris then after a day or two in Paris, activate the interrail ticket: (btw, do I have to activate it in advance or something)
Paris to Munich

then either: munich-vienna-prague-berlin-warsaw, and then have to pay for a train to get from Warsaw to Moscow, fly home to Dublin from Moscow

or: munich-prague-vienna-budapest-bucharest and then have to pay for a train from Bucharest to Istanbul, fly home to Dublin from Istanbul

There are some very long journeys here, particularly the warsaw-moscow and the budapest-bucharest-istanbul route and I was wondering if anyone has used any of the trains mentioned/ slept in any of the sleeper trains etc. What was it like etc. Also, what should I budget etc. I'd imagine the whole journey would last about 2 wks.
Any other advice would be great.

bladebrew

I have never been interrailling before so I can't offer much advice but if you don't know it already you should take a look at seat61.com it has an insane amount of information including timetables routes and prices to Istanbul and Moscow from London, sounds like a good trip though!

Peanut

I did Dublin->Istanbul interrail a few years ago but went via Dover->France->Switzerland->Italy->Greece.

Unfortunately the Greek route is not an option now due to international train services from/to Greece having been cancelled (unless you get a bus from Thessaloniki/Alexandroupolis->Ist).

Not sure if it's the same now, but with the 5 days out of 10 ticket you would just have 5 date entries on the paper ticket itself and write down the dates you wanted to use the ticket on. You could do this on the day you were travelling (before the first journey that day), you didn't need to specify when buying the ticket. If the journey was overnight, you just needed to specify the date when the journey that day started (unless you also wanted to use it the next day of course).

One thing is if you're planning on figuring out when it's worthwhile using a day, the cost of a normal ticket generally goes down the further east you go. Also the trains get slower. The service from Bulgaria to Istanbul is pretty slow and basic.

As far as reserving trains, if you're slightly flexible with the train times you can get, I don't think it would be too much of a problem, although I guess reserving popular trains a day or two in advance might be an idea. The only problem I had with this was going from Paris to the south of France, some of the express trains were heavily booked.

For some of the journeys, you need to pay a supplement, especially if it's any kind of fast train. I mostly went to the ticket office in each station to either ask or pay for the supplement. There's probably a web site where you can figure this out in advance though - just be prepared to be a bit flexible if you miss a connection or have to get a later train.

Columbia

Going from Warsaw - Moscow, check the train route. If it goes via Belarus you will need to get a Belorussian visa. As far as I know, there is an alternate route through the Baltic states.