In addition, there's about 2x year a 25% sale and you have a year to activate the passes.

The in southern Europe (e.g. France, Spain, Italy), required seat reservation is most common and most expensive.

I don't mind requiring seat reservations, but that it is separate from the ticket price and significant (eg 15€/seat reservation in Italy), feels like price gouging. It also feels different from say the optional (and way lower priced seat reservations in German ICE's (high speed rail)). I rather pay for a "high speed rail supplement" instead of seat reservation haha :).

I interrailed last year through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Italy and Switzerland.

In Germany I was lucky, I only had a small delay on the way back.

Austria was exceptional in everything. On time, modern trains and facilities. I guess the food on the train was expensive and bland, but I've never seen a train where that's different.

Slovenia was the weirdest and had the most delays. Train cars for which I had seat reservations consistently didn't exist or arrive. They use old stock, but that also made it kind of fun and there were great views. I couldn't rely on the time table though.

Italy has lots of high speed rail, but required (paid) seat reservations. The problem is that for almost any medium-long distance there's no slower speed alternative. The normal speed stock is fine (can be taken to go to smaller cities) and was generally on time.

Trains in Switzerland are exceptional too. Funnily enough, I did have fairly significant delays 2/5 times.

Wow that's a fantastic deal. I seem to remember it was about £280 in the 90s for standard class, 30 day unlimited.