…It’s totally doable, and feels adventurous in a gentle, fun way.

So the thing about a lot of “I got there by train” articles  in newspapers is that you find out in the small print that the author was comped the trip and they did not once have to deal with a train company website or railway station ticket machine, or they do railway stuff professionally, or they travelled in first class. So, for the rest of us, this is how it actually works. Don’t necessarily follow all steps, unless you want the full Zoe can’t-take-her-anywhere experience.

Stage 0: the planning

You’re going on an adventure across Europe and you daydream of coming and going as your fancy takes you, so buy an interrail pass. Get the paper one so you can feel old school (and have another item in your bag that you’re constantly thinking, did I leave that on the kitchen table?)

Use all your Eurostar points to book a train from London to Paris for freeeee. Realize 2 days later that your interrail pass entitled you to a €30 Eurostar fare, which by Eurostar standards is close enough to free that there was really no reason to use all your points like that. Sulk.

Every time you’ve taken the train in Germany in the past year there have been delays and cancellations, so decide it’s safer to go via Switzerland. There’s a sleeper train between Zurich and Budapest, and you can pre-book a bed using the Austrian railways website.

(You know this because you have spent an inordinate amount of time on seat61.com. Go to see if there’s a “buy me a coffee” link because by now you’ve definitely benefitted from many coffees worth of advice; turns out there’s just a link to a UNICEF fundraiser “in case you found this website useful”. Try not to cry at the wholesomeness of it all.)

Stage 1: London to Paris.

Technically you can do this on the morning of the day you travel to Zurich, but it would be an early morning and it’s appealing to close your laptop on a Friday afternoon, head to the station and be in Paris that night.

Walk through Ridley road market on your way to the Overground, think to yourself do I even need to go abroad to experience different cultures? Feel unsure if this is wisdom or London-style parochialism.

Get to St Pancras way earlier than you expected, don’t stop and think that maybe you should get a nice drink somewhere, instead go on through security and passport control and then spend 90 minutes in the Eurostar waiting area, which is decidedly not big enough for the number of passengers and is thus a worse travel experience even than Luton airport.

Regardless, get on the train, have a smooth ride to Paris, heck yeah you’re on an adventure!!!!

Stage 2: Paris to Zurich

You haven’t pre-booked anything for Paris to Zurich. (A note about interrail passes: they’re not as turn-up-and-go as you might imagine, because lots of fast trains and night trains require seat reservations, which aren’t always cheap.) On Saturday morning in your hostel, decide you have 2 good options: string together regional trains (no reservations needed=no extra cost) and go via Mulhouse, or go a roundabout way via Geneva and get some Swiss scenery.

The weather is nice and you like scenery, so book a tgv to Bellegarde, France (cheaper than a train direct to Geneva; from there you’ll take regional trains so it’s your only cost for the day). Follow the seat61 advice (of course) and book on a website where you have to access the desktop version on your phone, but don’t have to pay a booking fee. You should realize by now that this sort of ridiculousness is normal for international rail travel in Europe — call it part of the adventure. Albeit an annoying part of the adventure.

Realize your train leaves from Paris Gare de Lyon, while you are staying near Gare du Nord. It’s fine! It’s 2 stops on the RER. It’s not fine! There’s a massive queue for metro tickets that you didn’t factor in. It’s fine! In less time than it takes to get to the front of the ticket queue you can download both of the two apps you need to buy a metro ticket on your phone, and work out the not-award-winning user interface.

Make it to your train with 7 mins to spare, but without having done a supermarket trip for train snacks. Buy a coffee on board instead, and feel grateful the French have decent train catering on their main trains.

Spend a couple of hours wandering around Geneva; have a supermarket salad for lunch in an attempt to not spend your entire budget less than 24 hours into your trip.

Hop on a train to Zurich. Pro tip: there are 2 routes for trains to Zurich, the one via Biel runs along various lakes, views are on the right hand side of the train. That’s a good pick. Your train will be 20 minutes late to depart for reasons unclear; an Australian couple seated near you will be really cross really loudly about this, for reasons unclear.

Arrive in Zurich with time to grab dinner. Blow all the budget you carefully saved in Geneva.

Stage 3: Zurich to Budapest

Night train time!!!

Share a compartment with a Hungarian woman and a young man from Austria who is getting off at the crack of dawn somewhere before Vienna.

The attendant will speak Hungarian and German. You speak neither. (You’ll be fine.) She is seemingly very funny in Hungarian, judging from the reactions from other passengers.

Your Hungarian compartment buddy will explain that the attendant is meant to be able to scan tickets, but instead has to write down the numbers because the system is broken, because this is Hungary. Contemplate how many countries there even are where people can say, “things are working well. Typical.”

The blind to the window on your compartment door is a thing that slides upwards. All 3 of you will assume there is meant to be a blind that slides down, which is missing (because this is Hungary). Construct a makeshift blind out of a blanket. The attendant will laugh at you when she sees it.

Doze on and off, until you give up at Vienna where it is definitely morning and the attendant has brought you coffee.

A few hours later, roll into Budapest. You made it!