My wife and I are planning a 21-day trip to Poland. We are considering an 8-day Eurail Poland Mobile Pass. For two people, the advertised price is $277 for 8 separate days of use within one month. Looks like a good value to travel between 7 urban centers ... from Krakow to Gdansk to Warsaw to Zakopane and back to Krakow. Do you have any recent experience with this Eurail Polish travel pass and with trains in Poland?
Posted by
Washington DC
28929 posts
Plug your trips into the intercity.pl website and check the ticket costs. Polish trains are relatively inexpensive, so I doubt that you'd save a great deal with the pass. On the other hand, it wouldn't be a huge waste of money (as Eurailpasses often are) if you end up doing essentially all your intercity transportation by train. It's entirely possible individual tickets would be less expensive; Bialystok to Lodz cost me 44 zloty (less than $11) at the senior rate. The regular fare would be about $16, I think. (Intercity.pl isn't behaving for me right now.)
I encountered a full day of sold-out trains during my trip to Poland in 2018 when I tried to buy a ticket the afternoon before departure, so it wouldn't be safe to plan simply to show up at a station and hop on a major, long-distance train.
Posted by
Lake District, England
9133 posts
Krakow to Gdansk for instance is 90 zloty normal fare, or 58.50 zloty senior fare (4 zloty to the USD) so $23/$15 and you would be advised to make seat reservations for Eurail pass. Those fares are for travel in 2 hours time so are basically walk up fares.
So as @acraven says you need to do the maths.
But on the face of it point to point may well be cheaper or no more expensive.
Posted by
272 posts
Keep in mind that most trains in Poland require seat reservations - you will have to get it before each journey. It's possible online through intercity.pl but when I tried for example Warsaw to Kraków EIP train it showed that Eurail pass holders have to pay an extra 43PLN (about $10) per person per journey.
Normally, when you buy a ticket, seat reservation is included at no extra cost.
Posted by
OP
WI
2 posts
Thank you for your replies. I think we'll pay for the intercity tickets on a trip by trip basis. The number of cities we'll try to visit is decreasing ..there appears to be so much to appreciate in each city...realistically, it's not possible to see what interests us in 21 days.