Euro 2024 Travel arrangements

[0Neils40yarder]

Travelling from Rotterdam to Cologne in a motor home...anyone any suggestions on best/available camp sites for a couple of nights?

[Molotov]

2 minutes ago, 0Neils40yarder said:

Travelling from Rotterdam to Cologne in a motor home...anyone any suggestions on best/available camp sites for a couple of nights?

There are some Facebook vanlife/motorhome pages that will be better suited to gaining great advice. 

[welshbairn]

19 hours ago, Mr Pikey said:

3and half hour train will fly by with us full of excitement and drink. koln will be just like going from Motherwell to Edinburgh, no big deal . There for 5 days , so 2 days with the Tartan Army ,3 days juking about the local area. Sounds good to me. Air bnb is cracking and cheap .And as you say its a nice place. Cannae wait.

Here's your local train timetable, change at Duren or Euskirchen for Cologne.  The full timetable linked below covers the whole North West.

https://infoportal.mobil.nrw/fileadmin/02_Wiki_Seite/02_Information_Service/05_NRW_Fahrplanbuch/NRW_Fahrplanbuch_2024.pdf

[Stellaboz]

49 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Here's your local train timetable, change at Duren or Euskirchen for Cologne.  The full timetable linked below covers the whole North West.

https://infoportal.mobil.nrw/fileadmin/02_Wiki_Seite/02_Information_Service/05_NRW_Fahrplanbuch/NRW_Fahrplanbuch_2024.pdf

Great find, but be careful as I think the timetables may change before next summer. 

[craigkillie]

Any thoughts on the Euro 2024 Interrail pass? It says it includes one journey back to your home country - do we think this will include both a Eurostar to London and a trip back up to Scotland from there?

[Pie Of The Month]

6 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Any thoughts on the Euro 2024 Interrail pass? It says it includes one journey back to your home country - do we think this will include both a Eurostar to London and a trip back up to Scotland from there?

LNER and the Caledonian Sleeper are specifically listed in their British train companies so I don't see why it wouldn't. Could always ask interrail directly and ask then they've got a month to reply before they go on sale. https://www.interrail.eu/en/support#contact-us

[Arch Stanton]

12 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Any thoughts on the Euro 2024 Interrail pass? It says it includes one journey back to your home country - do we think this will include both a Eurostar to London and a trip back up to Scotland from there?

You're allowed 2 travel days within your own country therefore a Eurostar to London and onwards to Scotland in the same day would be covered.

[Arch Stanton]

Quote

Interrail Passes are designed to offer you the best of rail travel abroad. Therefore, you cannot use an Interrail One Country Pass to travel in your own country. An Interrail Global Pass is valid for travel in your country of residence during one outbound journey and one inbound journey that occur during travel days at any point in your trip.

 

[welshbairn]

27 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Any thoughts on the Euro 2024 Interrail pass? It says it includes one journey back to your home country - do we think this will include both a Eurostar to London and a trip back up to Scotland from there?

From this link I think Glasgow to London would count as your one trip in the UK, Eurostar from London to Cologne or wherever wouldn't count. Same on way home. This is assuming that the Euro 24 passes will be much the same as the current Interrail passes, just 25% cheaper, which I expect to be the case.

Scroll down to the paper pass section here:

https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/what-is-interrail/travel-your-own-country

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by welshbairn

[craigkillie]

1 hour ago, Pie Of The Month said:

LNER and the Caledonian Sleeper are specifically listed in their British train companies so I don't see why it wouldn't. Could always ask interrail directly and ask then they've got a month to reply before they go on sale. https://www.interrail.eu/en/support#contact-us

 

1 hour ago, Arch Stanton said:

You're allowed 2 travel days within your own country therefore a Eurostar to London and onwards to Scotland in the same day would be covered.

 

1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

From this link I think Glasgow to London would count as your one trip in the UK, Eurostar from London to Cologne or wherever wouldn't count. Same on way home. This is assuming that the Euro 24 passes will be much the same as the current Interrail passes, just 25% cheaper, which I expect to be the case.

Scroll down to the paper pass section here:

https://www.interrail.eu/en/interrail-passes/what-is-interrail/travel-your-own-country

 

Thanks, this was my thought too, just trying to weigh up the various options just now.

[lichtiemike]

Is there any down side to booking the €49 ticket for a month? Ideally I’d want to book seats for my journeys as I assume they’ll be hoaching. 

[welshbairn]

16 minutes ago, lichtiemike said:

Is there any down side to booking the €49 ticket for a month? Ideally I’d want to book seats for my journeys as I assume they’ll be hoaching. 

The 49 euro Deutschland ticket is only for slow regional trains so it's not much use for bombing up from Munich to Cologne, say, and local transport will be free from 6am on match days till 6pm the following day. You can reserve seats on Deutsche Bahn trains before buying a train ticket or pass, the cheap Euro tickets and interrail passes come out on Jan 17th. You'll be able to start reserving seats in the next few days.

Edited December 13, 2023 by welshbairn

[Pie Of The Month]

I'm also not sure there's any regional trains where you can book a seat in advance. I've yet to not be able to get on a regional train due to it being too busy though and I include after football, probably different first thing in the morning when there are commuters though.

Also make sure you cancel it before a certain day in the month or you'll get charged for July too, it's a subscription rather than a one off.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Pie Of The Month

[lubo_blaha]

6 hours ago, craigkillie said:

Any thoughts on the Euro 2024 Interrail pass? It says it includes one journey back to your home country - do we think this will include both a Eurostar to London and a trip back up to Scotland from there?

I think you have to pay a €30 reservation fee to use it on the Eurostar. 

[Todd_is_God]

4 hours ago, lichtiemike said:

Is there any down side to booking the €49 ticket for a month? Ideally I’d want to book seats for my journeys as I assume they’ll be hoaching. 

Yes. You can't at the moment, and isn't valid on the long distance trains you'd want a seat reservation for anyway.

As @Pie Of The Month says its a subscription service too, which will need canceling before 10th June to avoid being charged for July.

You (typically) need to pay by direct debit using your IBAN. I couldn't get mine to work, but thankfully the Rheinbahn app allows you to use a credit or debit card for the DT.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, lubo_blaha said:

I think you have to pay a €30 reservation fee to use it on the Eurostar. 

I think it might be cheaper if you book it through DB, they're saying 4.90 euros for a random date in January for London-Cologne. It might be more complicated and more expensive than that though.

[thistledo]

Best / cheapest approach probably just to get booking all your long distance trains on the 17th January then, I think the long distance ones won't be too busy with a lot of fans opting to base themselves in the general vicinity of the stadium on that day. I have no other basis for this prediction though. 

This might have been covered already, but see as long as you have tickets for games during the euros, can you use any local trains if you're in the region that has a game on that day, but you don't have a ticket for that specific game? 

[Billy Jean King]

59 minutes ago, thistledo said:

Best / cheapest approach probably just to get booking all your long distance trains on the 17th January then, I think the long distance ones won't be too busy with a lot of fans opting to base themselves in the general vicinity of the stadium on that day. I have no other basis for this prediction though. 

This might have been covered already, but see as long as you have tickets for games during the euros, can you use any local trains if you're in the region that has a game on that day, but you don't have a ticket for that specific game? 

Pretty sure it's a ticket specific to a game in that region for the 36hr free local travel window. For example having a ticket to the Scotland game in Munich wont allow you to travel on local trains around Cologne for free even during the 36hr validity window. It would only allow travel in and around the specified area around Munich. 

[Juan Mata]

3 hours ago, Billy Jean King said:

Pretty sure it's a ticket specific to a game in that region for the 36hr free local travel window. For example having a ticket to the Scotland game in Munich wont allow you to travel on local trains around Cologne for free even during the 36hr validity window. It would only allow travel in and around the specified area around Munich. 

The one sort of thing that may catch those out that are familiar with the region and the usual travel areas, is that for EURO they have combined the VRR and VRS travel regions.  Usually these are separate and you need to really be aware of which city/town is in each when going to any club football and using the included travel, but for EURO a ticket to a match in either Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, Dusseldorf, Cologne is enough to go between either of the two transport regions during the 36 hours (6am matchday til 6pm the following day).   Check the map down the page here https://www.uefa.com/euro2024/event-guide/ticket-holders/

Edited December 14, 2023 by Juan Mata
added one word "two"

[craigkillie]

On 13/12/2023 at 17:00, lubo_blaha said:

I think you have to pay a €30 reservation fee to use it on the Eurostar. 

 

Yeah I was factoring that into it.