7. Packing tips

The Power of a Good Rucksack

This short post simply "does what it says on the tin" - it looks at what you need to pack for a one-month solo Interrail trip. 

Never having done an extended solo month-long train trip before, I was keen to lean on the experience of seasoned travellers on various travel blogs, social media posts, etc. All the advice seemed to be pointing to getting the choice of rucksack right. So my next task was a good comfortable well-fitting rucksack. I tried on a few in physical stores and got some good advice from store assistants. I quickly found out that new recommended ones are really expensive, some costing over €300. So I put an alert on DoneDeal an online marketplace in Ireland and within a month I had the choice of several used ones. 

Osprey is a brand that comes highly recommended. Here is the one I brought second-hand, it was used once on a trip to South America and is in perfect condition. I got it for about half the RRP.

 

I spotted this great AI-generated packing list on one of the many Facebook Interrail Groups that I follow, so I will include it here as it seemed very comprehensive. 

 

 

I would just add the following items to the above list: 

• A spare old phone and charger
• Photocopies of Interrail seat reservations and supplement, and of passport
• An Irish extension lead with a European plug fitted on one end, handy for charging several devices at the same time.  

As I tried to visualise packing all of the above items into my rucksack, I found it hard to imaging that there would be enough space - I suppose time will tell! 

In the next three posts, I go through a list of the most helpful apps that I have found in researching the trip. Post 8 looks at useful train travel and transport apps, post 9 delves into some useful city travel apps, while post 10 looks at useful accommodation and tourist information apps. 

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