Winning tip: Slow and social, Italy

Italy’s length makes it a great country to use an Interrail card. You can travel overnight to save on hotel bills and make the most of your time in cities – leave Milan at midnight, wake up in Naples at 7am! Some Italian regional trains are great fun, too. They go everywhere and you will have farmers, housewives and students for company, more than willing to share wine, lunch and lives. Once, on a train from Bologna to Florence, six of us in a shared compartment sorted out a woman’s relationship dilemma: whether to move in with her boyfriend in Florence or do a love commute from Bologna every other day.
Nicoletta

Splitting up in Madrid

Beware of trains that split! Heading for Seville, I travelled across the Spanish plains on a rickety old service – very scenic and romantic. At Madrid, it stopped for a long time and the destination boards weren’t clear. Leaving my rucksack in one compartment, I went into the next carriage to find an English speaker. “The guys back there tell me we’re going to Seville,” I said to my new American friend. “There is no ‘back there’,” she replied. “We’re on the train to Lisbon!” It took 36 hours to be reunited with my bag, sadly without the camera.
Neil

Bled bugs bite

On the way from Vienna to Lake Bled, normally a six-hour trip, our train was cancelled midway and we were forced to find an alternative route. Eventually, at 4am, eight hours after we had planned to, we wearily arrived at Bled to find our hostel wasn’t open yet. Exhausted, my friend and I decided to sleep by the lake for a few hours until it opened. An hour later, I woke up to my friend shouting in agony. He had been using an ants’ nest as a pillow.
Dominic

Travel days and local fares

If you are travelling on a flexi pass, consider whether it is worth using one of the travel days for every train journey, or whether paying cash and saving a travel day works out cheaper – particularly in eastern Europe, where fares are lower. For instance, Sarajevo-Mostar (wonderfully scenic) costs about £6 each-way, which is significantly less than a travel day is worth.
Alex

Creating in Croatia

If your Interrailing priority is returning home armed with some killer anecdotes, the sleeper train between Zagreb and Split is a must. Expect three-tier bunks dangling by a rope, a paper sheet in lieu of bedding, and limited bathroom facilities. The journey is likely to be enlivened by beer-wielding backpackers who are keen to make the most of the eight-hour journey, so entertainment isn’t in short supply. What’s more, waking up to daybreak on the Croatian coastline makes up for lack of sleep. Bunks need to be reserved for a small fee on top of the Interrail pass.
Susie

Night trains save time and money, Kraków-Budapest

When possible, take a night train. They are comfortable and you save a whole extra day to visit a city, and they also count as one day on your ticket. Night trains usually incur only a small extra cost, cheaper than an extra hotel/hostel night. One leg of my trip saw me in Kraków, where I visited the beautiful old town and took a morning trip from the central station to visit Auschwitz. Back at Kraków I took an overnight train to Budapest (costing about £6-7 if you pay local price) and, voilà, was in a new city and on the next leg of my Interrail trip.
Peter Sala

’Appy days exploring Europe

As novice Interrailers, we weren’t brave enough to just wave our passes and see where fate took us. The awesome Rail Planner app allowed us to be virtually adventurous. OK, we’re at Lille station on 9 September at 9am … where shall we go? Vienna? Twelve hours and four changes. Too long, too many changes. There’s a train to Cologne in 10 minutes ... sounds good – it’s got a cathedral, hasn’t it? Three weeks of doing that: best holiday ever.
Bev

Ferry good deal indeed

Interrail passes are not limited to trains – if you want a bit of variety, or ever get fed up with long rail trips, the card offers big discounts on ferries all over the continent. In Greece there are big savings on inter-island Blue Star ferries. And in Scandinavia you can cross the Baltic for half price from Germany to Finland on Finnlines vessels, which are top quality, with five-star facilities such as free, clean showers, cinema and swimming pools – really cool after an uncomfortable overnight train trip.
Nigel Cox

Children travel free

Don’t assume Interrail is only for the young and footloose. With children under 12 travelling free, they’re great for family holidays. We did two with our daughter before she turned 12. Travelling from Exeter to London for the Eurostar, with UK travel included on the ticket they’d practically paid for themselves by the time we got to St Pancras. With that many trains involved, things aren’t always going to go perfectly, but the beauty of Interrail is its flexibility. Be warned, though, that France, Spain and Italy can be less accommodating by requiring compulsory reservations for some trains.
Jon A

Border buffers, Italy/Slovenia

When I went Interrailing around northern Italy, I was really keen to end the trip by going over the border to Slovenia, but the Italian and Slovenian train networks aren’t connected. So I got a train to border town Gorizia then hopped on the local bus to Nova Gorica, which is the Slovenian side of the city (or you can walk it in about 30 minutes). I then got the train to Lake Bled through the Julian Alps – it was only about €6 for a single ticket if you want to save your day use, and the views were fantastic. It’s then very easy from Bled to get trains to Austria, or to Ljubljana.
Rachel

Looking for a holiday with a difference? Browse Guardian Holidays to see a range of fantastic trips