A Frst-class Ticket Back to the Past

InterRailing was a student rite of passage for Joanne O'Connor. Now, 16 years on, a new grown-up version of the rail pass inspires her to recreate the journey

• Joanne O'Connor
• The Observer,
• Sunday April 22 2007

It was the summer of 1991. Wearing flowery shorts and a cheap purple rucksack, I boarded a train at Victoria station with two friends. I don't remember much about that train journey. But I do remember the sense of giddy excitement I felt. We had four weeks, a money belt stuffed full of travellers' cheques and a rail pass that would take us almost anywhere in Europe.

Before gap years in Thailand or Australia became the norm, InterRailing was the student rite of passage. It seems tame now, but for Jenny, Steph and me, just graduated from Leeds University, this trip marked the end of a chapter, one last hurrah before returning home to the serious business of Getting A Job.

Over the following days, we tore south through France and Italy, managing to miss the major attractions of pretty much every city we visited. We went to Paris and didn't visit the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, we went to Rome and didn't see the Sistine Chapel, we went to Florence and queued for the Uffizi gallery, but didn't go in. We lived on a diet of croissants, bread, cheese and beer, occasionally treating ourselves to a pizza.

We slept in shared dormitories in grotty youth hostels or on overnight trains. By the time we hit Eastern Europe it all becomes a bit fuzzy. I have photographs of me in Budapest but I have no recollection of actually being there. In Vienna, I have a feeling we didn't even get off the train. Broke and exhausted, dirty and malnourished, we decided to skip Germany altogether and came home five days early. It was a blast.

Sixteen years later and nobody could be more surprised than I am to find myself in WH Smith, studying the Thomas Cook European Rail Timetable. In recognition of the fact that the horizons of the average student have widened far beyond the borders of the European Union, Rail Europe has started selling first-class InterRail passes for adults. In a further attempt to woo back the original generation of InterRailers, the passes are also now available in much shorter durations, starting from as little as three days.

I call up Steph. 'Want to go InterRailing?' There's a stunned silence. 'But not like before,' I add, hastily. 'It will be posh InterRailing: first-class travel, nice hotels, we'll sleep in real beds and we'll eat proper food in restaurants and, who knows, maybe even see some sights?'

But that's not the only way in which this journey will be different. For a start, Jenny has just had a baby so she won't be coming. And work commitments mean we'll have to condense the trip into a week. After some discussion, we decide to focus on Italy, scene of some of the biggest highs - and lows - of our first trip. The next decision is whether or not to book hotels in advance. By booking ahead, we save on the time and hassle of looking for places to stay when we get there, but we also lose the freedom to change our plans at the last minute, which is one of the great joys of this type of travel. For the first but certainly not the last time on this trip, being sensible wins out over spontaneity.

We meet at Waterloo station in London and, with a flourish of our first-class tickets, we are whisked through the fast-track lane and straight into the Business Premiere lounge. So absorbed are we in our complementary mini-croissants and free newspapers that we almost miss the train. As the Eurostar slides away from the platform and the hot flannels and lunch menu are brought round, we open a bottle of rosé and toast our new grown-up adventure.

'Can you believe Eurostar didn't even exist in 1991?' I sigh, settling back in my comfy seat. 'We had to get the ferry from Dover.'

'And there was no internet!' offers Steph. 'No lastminute.com. No mobile phones! You had to use a phone box if you wanted to call home.' She's warming to her theme now. 'No euros! Remember all those different currencies?'

'OK, stop.' I say. 'I'm starting to feel old.'

We have a few hours to kill in Paris before boarding the sleeper train which will carry us through the night to Venice. We drop our bags at the Gare du Nord, and head for the Pere Lachaise cemetery where we pay our respects to Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf. Paris Bercy station is swarming with excited Italian and Spanish schoolchildren. The train is full but luckily we've reserved a two-bed sleeping compartment, something we would not have had the foresight, or the funds, to do on our first trip.

As we slip through the suburbs of Paris in the fading light, the guard comes to our compartment and takes our reservation for the dining car. 'This is so civilised,' says Steph. The next morning, after a fitful sleep, I pull open the blinds to see water in every direction. The train appears to be in the sea. It takes me a couple of moments to realise we are in fact crossing the rail bridge which links Venice to the Italian mainland.

Oh I wish we could stay in Venice all week! But I suppose that would be missing the point. InterRailing is not about getting under the skin of a place, it's about skimming across the surface, dipping into a few choice highlights and then moving swiftly on to the next stop. Our next stop is Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. The train is a sleek, double-deck affair. At Padua dozens of university students get on. They look so young and I suddenly understand why, on that first trip, we were constantly being asked why our parents weren't with us.

Verona is well-heeled, elegant and very walkable. Twenty-four hours later and we are back on the train, heading west to Milan. It's an old-fashioned commuter train which stops at every station, but what the rolling stock lacks in glamour, the train staff more than make up for. The inspector who checks our tickets looks like Leonardo DiCaprio. It's at about this point in the journey that I realise we haven't actually spoken to anyone apart from waiters and ticket inspectors. Our original journey featured a constantly changing cast of fellow travellers. The first-class carriages are full of commuters and business people plugged into their laptops.

Milan's Stazione Centrale is terrifying in scale and decorated with carved winged horses, gargoyles, cherubs, Art Deco flourishes and mosaics. We are up early the next morning to catch a TGV train which will carry us across the Alps and up through eastern France into Paris. I've been looking forward to this journey and it occurs to me that maybe I am turning into a railway buff. It really is rather lovely travelling this way. No security checks, no queues, no interrogations.

For a city built on high fashion and international finance, Milan has an awful lot of allotments. This is another aspect of rail travel I like. Creeping up behind a city while it's looking the other way, seeing all the bits that are normally hidden from view. Steph goes off to the buffet car to get us some drinks. As she returns, the automatic doors sigh open and a whiff of egg sandwiches, warm air and the sound of small children wailing wafts in from the carriage next door. 'It's hell back there,' she says, gesturing towards the standard-class carriage. 'I'm SO glad we are travelling first-class'.

'What was the buffet car like?' I ask. 'Uninspiring. I think I was imagining a dining car with white linen table cloths.'

Hmmm. I can see the stakes are getting higher. It will have to be the Orient Express next time.

Tonight is our last night. Perhaps we should go to a nightclub? I'm worried this trip has been too sedate, too uneventful. There have been no mishaps, no narrow escapes, and none of the giddy sense of possibility that characterised our first InterRail trip. But on the plus side, I feel quite good. Like I've had a holiday. I am not suffering from malnourishment or sleep deprivation. And I do feel like I've been to these places now. This trip was just as much fun as the first one. But perhaps my idea of fun has changed.

At 1610 we pull into the Gare de l'Est. Paris is basking in a spring heatwave and the trees are in blossom. We dump our bags in the hotel and head straight for the Louvre. It's my sixth visit to Paris and I'm determined actually to go inside this time rather than just having my picture taken by the glass pyramid.

But we don't go in, of course. We take pictures of each other standing in front of the pyramid then, somehow, end up sitting in the cafe talking about friends and boyfriends and the best-selling novels that neither of us has quite got around to writing yet. The Louvre will have to wait until next time. Some things don't change.