IMHO, more young people should do this kind of thing (within reason of course). Now that I'm older I realize I didn't appreciate how opportunities to do stuff like this often diminish in later phases of life. Personally, I did have some adventures kind of like this, but in retrospect, I should have done a bit more as I look back very fondly on those times.
YES! Absolutely. I look back on my 20s and these events where I had a moments of bravery in a sea of mediocrity and regret stand out as the defining moments that had any lasting memories.
Things as simple as talking to a girl on the train and striking up a friendship to saving up some money and quitting my job that I hated and did not want to do to buy a one way ticket to another continent and living out of hostels.
There have been pain points: , a decade later that girl ended up causing me grief when we did not amicably split ties, the trip caused me to encounter scammers on the run from the law that robbed me of some money and almost landed me in French jail by mistake, the switch from a field I got boxed into that I quit to what I wanted to do was painful and took way longer than it should have.
But looking back, i'd suffer through the dark moments all over again because it made me grow. My life looking back thus far was a mostly mundane existence of missed opportunities mixed in with moments of bravery that spiced things up from time to time and for that I am grateful and blessed.
Classic excuse for not doing a thing. You made choices, that's all, you were not prevented from any choices, you simply didn't think of or didn't prioritize them.
Which is fine, we all have to obviously since you can't have everything. The point is just that whatever you didn't choose, you didn't choose.
There are countless things I wish I did, and although at various points I had no money or other potential excuses I could say, none of those actually prevented me from persuing whatever I did choose to persue instead. Many things I didn't do I know were purely from lack of imagination or bravery or effort. Other things I did do, I somehow did despite having no money or only junk versions of tools & resources etc.
I don't have to know your particular life details and hardships because it doesn't matter what they are. This applies to some greater or lesser degree to everyone who is merely lucky enough not to be born a literal owned property slave chained to a wall in a box.
Don’t create mental blocks like that in your head just because everyone else in your age group says the same thing. You don’t have to zap every penny of debt in order to enjoy your life.
> You don’t have to zap every penny of debt in order to enjoy your life.
No, you don't, but you can't discharge student loans in a bankruptcy, and you have to pay them every month once you're no longer a student.
When I got to the end of medical residency, I took a job starting the day after it ended. A German-born and raised doctor of my acquaintance said that I was being foolish, I should take a month off after four years and take a nice vacation.
I said, "With what money? I don't have enough money to take a vacation, so I'll just be sitting at home, and I need a check at the end of this month to pay my bills. Do you want to pay for it?"
Some people offer useless advice, and he's one of them?
Seriously, unless you're from a well-off family, have joined the military, or have a well-paid spouse, even making the schooling free would require borrowing living expenses.
"Schlussendlich schaffte ich es nur mit einem Kredit von meinem Onkel, die 5.888€ für die BahnCard aufzubringen"
"I only managed to raise €5,888 for the BahnCard with a loan from my uncle"
Why is that in your opinion? In the US, passenger trains (Amtrak) are generally hopeless as well (expensive, not punctual, etc) especially across most of the country where Amtrak operates on other company's (freight) tracks. In the northeast corridor (where Amtrak has its own tracks), its service is markedly better.
Lol Trains in the UK are shit.
Every ICE Trainset and even most commuter services have way more comfort than the UK trains with uncomfortable seats, usually no tables or sockets in second class on commuter routes, a smell of shit inside the Avanti Pendolinos, and trains that should have been recycled 30 years ago.
I have heard this opinion over and over again but it just hasn't been my experience. I've spent a lot of time in both Berlin and Munich over the last couple of years and I never waited more than 10 minutes for a train
The cross country ones aren't really of interest to me. Those don't move a whole lot of volume. The inner city transportation such as the DART is what most people use and it's punctuality rating is closer to 70%. I'd love to know how they measure that though because I took the DART 5 days a week for months and it was not on time far more often than it was. The people here literally don't bother checking the listed times because they're wrong. Show up at the station and pray one arrives within the hour
When people talk about Deutsche Bahn being unreliable, they are talking about the cross-country regional / ICE network, not city rail (S-Bahn etc in Berlin, Hamburg are frequent and pretty reliable).
You may have had a good experience here in Germany as a tourist, but it's simply not reality. Trains are not reliably on time here these days, and it's a huge problem.
I do not doubt the DART is unreliable in Dublin, the buses are just as bad (I moved to Germany from Dublin a little over a year ago). I know it's a bit apples to oranges comparison between Germany and Ireland, but I can assure you, it is bad here in Germany currently!
I've had terrible experience with intercities train with delays that were more than 25% of the length of the trip. Once I was waiting for a train that was an hour late. The next train on the same line even arrived before the train I was waiting.
I've traveled in a lot of countries and used train in a lot of them, none of them have been quite as bad as DB when it comes to reliability.
And the recent articles that claim only around 60% of trains arrive on time bears that.
The reliability of trains in Germany is horrible compared to the planned and published timetables.
However, there are typically many more connections than in many other countries. Don't expect to be at your destination in time, but once you have accepted that travelling by train is still better than in many other countries. Yes, Switzerland plays in a different league.
Cars get stuck in traffic jams all the time. Still I don't hear frequently how horrible travelling by car is.
Things must have really changed. Back in 1998 I did a month long trip around Germany on whatever the ticket was called to travel as much as you wanted for that month. I never had issues and I loved it all.
Indeed, my limited experience with German trains is awful.
There are lines in Switzerland where some of the trains doing it are DB trains transiting through CH and going from or to Germany. These trains also pickup and drop off passengers in CH, doing the same stops as the national trains.
I’ve learnt to avoid these German trains like the plague: they’re often late, crowded, dirty, or even canceled at the last minute.
Even if they (in theory) offer a shorter travel time, I know by now it’s mostly fictional because of the issues above. I prefer to take the SBB train that I’m sure will show up even if it means the trip will be 30 min longer.
I mean, you could argue that given how bad the state of our rail infrastructure is overall, being punctual on slightly over 50% of trips could be counted as efficient?
Well, he's not the only one living on a moving vehicle. Tons of homeless people get bus passes and ride around all day and night. A train ride is less bumpy, sure, but it's effectively the same. Although what probably happens is that this kid goes on weekend train trips and comes back home the next day, unless he's seriously mentally ill. Even the most dedicated backpacker would give up on this after a week. It's basically torture.
If I understood the situation correctly, he times his day train to book a night train with a sleeping berth. Still, I agree. I would find this very uncomfortable after some time.
Hopefully he also has friends he can stay with in various cities.
I love trains as much as the next nerd but that's a heck of a commitment haha
I think if I wanted to do the digital nomad thing I'd have to cheat on the nomad bit a little and have an anchor flat somewhere.. where else would I keep the NAS?!
As it stands my lil studio flat is 300/yr cheaper with all bills inc and has a coffee machine built into the (admittedly communal, but massive) kitchen. Plenty of caffeine, plenty of legroom!
If nothing else I'm sure we'd agree on remote working being amazing for finding the exact environment that suits you :)
Cloud services are precisely the kind of thing that enable being a digital nomad. Having a permanent home so that you can keep your own NAS is almost the exact opposite of that.
You don't need a permanent home to own a NAS. Rent co-location space, rent a closet from a friend, rent space in your parent's house. You don't exactly need a livable amount of space to store a NAS.
It's no different than paying to use the servers your shit is stored on in some cloud service.
a colo will host your nas in a virtual machine for €5 a month or in a physical machine for €30 a month. this includes the machine and internet connection. i think you'll have a hard time finding a studio flat in europe for under €150 a month
They put his yearly cost at ~9900€ which comes out to ~830€/mo. So 300€/mo cheaper would come out at around 530€/mo. At that price you could get a studio apartment in many cities or at least afford to live with 1-2 roommates.
at first i thought you meant corobo's nas was honking gigantic, but i think i misunderstood your intention
i think you are talking about lasse stolley rather than corobo
is that correct
if i understand correctly, stolley's €830/month includes not just lodging but also food, computer parts, hosting, and transportation. i spend less than that but that's because i live in argentina
A small town (~70k pop) in the middle of England. Pre-covid the pay in local IT was quite a hindrance (£25k/yr is pretty much the average locally) but it's a great place to be now that remote work is a bit more normalised :)
Plenty of trails to walk or cycle, fields everywhere to shortcut through, decent train and motorway connections to the major cities on the rare occasion I do need to be on-site.
There's even a castle to explore within walking distance :)
Well, if you have parents (he definitely has them at 17) or other relatives, you can ask them to host your hardware for some thank you payment (can be just the benefit of having PiHole for free). Or that could be some friend as well.
Well yeah I was making a little bit of a joke there. It's also a handy place to keep the rest of my stuff, receive letters, use as an address for banks, sleep in known comfort, all the good stuff that comes with having a fixed abode
If it was the only thing stopping me doing the nomad thing I'd set it up at a friend's house (with payment in terabytes of storage) or aye colo it
There are so many possible perspectives for such story but in this day and age the focus is on how much this cost.
So let's talk about cost: I don't know how often he sleeps in this way[0] but clearly at £8500/year no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substandard hostel
[0] https://leben-im-zug.de/mein-erster-tag-mit-der-bahncard-100...
> That night, I decide to lie down under the seats on my air mattress, the air mattress at 2 meters doesn't quite fit under a 4 seat, so there's still a little bit of the footwell of the square in front of me, but with the low occupancy of the train, this is not a problem whatsoever, with my head half under a seat of the 4 seat. It's tight, but it's enough to lie on your side and change position sometimes at night, I take up about 3 seats in total.
hey, he paid for it! They gave him an unlimited ticket in exchange for euros.
You're free to say that the train company shouldn't have created an unlimited ticket but it's unfair to paint a person who uses what he legally bought as a thief.
While that is true (if you don't have a seat reservation) you are prohibited from occupying more than one seat per DB ToS.
"Each passenger is only allowed to occupy one seat [...] Passengers who behave contrary to the above regulations, ignore the instructions of employees or otherwise pose a threat to safety and order can be excluded from transport or further transport without entitlement to reimbursement of the fare and baggage price."
well I'm pretty sure if those seats were taken he'd sleep in its own seat. Perhaps his equation would change if had to sleep upright every night, but still, there is nothing illegal
Some of the older posts (https://leben-im-zug.de/howto-nachtreise-im-ice/) explain that when he was travelling second class, he was able to sleep on a luggage rack most of the time. That practice actually appears to consume a negative number of seats!
This is clearly also something you can only do when you're seventeen. I think if I tried to sleep on a luggage rack then (a) I would wake up in a claustrophobic panic attack, and (b) the rack would break.
There is no such thing as overusing a thing that is sold as unlimited.
It's true that the train company does some probability math and figures out some balance point for the proper price for the ticket based on some estimated bell curve of usage, just like a diner selling a "bottomless" cup of coffee for $1.
But that doesn't make the right half of the curve "overusing" any more than it makes the left half of the curve "underusing". They are all merely using the thing that the supplier sold in accordance with the terms set by the supplier.
They are pointing out that what the previous commenter said was ridiculous, by saying the same thing with merely other variables swapped in which more obviously illustrates how ridiculous the original statement was.
Yes, it's called a "false analogy", a typical informal fallacy.
There is nothing ridiculous about the fact that people-that-use-more-than-average (over-users: p>.5) are compensated by people-that-use-less-than-average (under-users: p<.5) to establish an average... it's called spread.
> no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substandard hostel
It is not an externalized cost. DB would even make more money if more people did it, up until the point it started costing them more profitable sales (at which point they will change the rules). It is like any mass transport, where it is better to carry a passenger at zero or even negative profit than it is to have a half empty bus/plane/train. A full plane, even if half are traveling at cost, is more profitable than a half full plane, because the fixed costs of the journey is amortized over more passengers. Rather than 50% of the full fare being lost to the fixed journey costs, only 25% of the full fare gets lost. This is how economy class works, where little profit is made, but covers the fixed cost of a flight allowing more profit to be extracted from business, first and extras.
Brave move, but I wonder how he keeps or makes new friendships and deeper relationships. Maybe this is fine for a while, but people need people (not just text in a chatroom), and I hope he has an exit strategy from this lifestyle, for this reason.
It's not just about seeing people. It's about having deep connections and shared experiences. Eg: one of his friends has a life crisis and just needs to talk to someone. Are they going to hop on a train and track this guy down, or will they go see one of their other friends? So he will miss out being the person someone turns to, and these are the defining moments for long lasting friendships. Again, probably fine for a while, but if it goes on too long those existing friendships could fade away and he could miss out.
Is this train thing really different from the average "digital nomad"?
They too are away from their old standing friends, and since they are usually not intending to stay forever in the country they stay in, they're probably not investing in any deep connections there either.
In fact, given the huge loneliness/isolation trends, he is probably not that different to the average stationary person in this regard either.
DN here. It’s definitely different insofar that nomads frequently live in longer term shared spaces (ie weeks to months) and it’s pretty easy to meet people in these situations.
I don't live near anyone I could turn to like that, except my wife and mother. When I need to talk to someone, I do it on Slack, or I hop on a zoom call.
When I lived in New York, it wasn't that much different - my friends and I occasionally lived on opposite sides of Manhattan & Brooklyn; now I live in New Jersey, and if I want to see close friends, I have to dedicate at least half the day to it, and going somewhere on a whim is not always an option for me. Depending on where this kid is at any given moment, it might be faster for him to get to a friend than it would take me to get to mine.
Literally the other way around? Dude could hop on the train himself for free literally the same hour and see his friends no matter where they live in a couple hours?
Seriously, I have lived in remote regions and not everybody living there owns a car.
Many people need hours to get to their friends as well.
Travelling is an absolutely excellent way to meet people if you're at all open to it. "Deeper relationships" .. don't always last at that age. Often they get uprooted anyway at the transitions in and out of university. Which is probably the likely exit for this guy.
There's definitely a Fight Club single-serving friend reference to be had here.
Both in terms of cheap throwaway reference and maybe that's actually how he does it?
When I was commuting a lot I'd always see the same faces, eventually got to nattering with some of them. Nothing super deep or anything but that's probably more on my social ability than possibility :)
While this lifestyle is not for me, i tend to concur on the statement. I personally pick my houses as distant from people as possible. People don’t need people. Sure it gets lonely sometimes but let me ask you if you enjoying the company you have all the time.
People don’t need people. It’s rather personality related
YMMV, but all humans are social creatures, going back to our primate ancestors. Isolation harms health, mentally, emotionally, and physically; at its extreme, such as solitary confinement, it's considered torture. Note that almost all humans socialize and live among other humans (compared to animals like bears which live alone).
To be fair, this "social networking site" is specifically designed to be hostile towards most forms of social networking, and it's full of misanthropes who probably have the Unabomber manifesto right next to the Dragon Book on their bookshelf.
I'd be surprised if that was the way "most people living in city apartments" do it.
Why wouldn't city apartments have washing machines? (In Germany and most of the rest of Europe we also don't particular need, or care for, driers either, that's what clotheslines are for).
Laundromats I'd say are more for like, students, tourists, travellers, fresh immigrants, people with some temporary arrangements and no stable residence, etc.
Damn, what kind of apartment doesn't come with laundry? Only time I didn't have an in-unit washer was student accomodation. If I viewed a place without one now I'd laugh the estate agent out country.
Even in Germany, a software dev with a burn rate of 10k a year must be seriously in profit each month. Buy index funds on payday and he has a wide variety of exiting strategies available.
If I was his age a $2.5K on a years interrail ticket for unlimited travel across Europe (admittedly 2nd class and there may seat reservation charges) would be very tempting
When I was interrailing I'd try and do some across Europe night trains as it meant I saved on hostel costs and I'd wake up somewhere new. The choices are somewhat limited though
We did that a lot as well. Night trains are the closest mankind has to teleportation. Hop on a train in Berlin, have a beer, sleep, wake up in the centre Paris or Rome with a coffee and a croissant.
The closest we have to teleportation is airplanes (i.e. shortest travel time). Sleeper trains are more like cryostasis ships. The journey takes forever, but you don't notice.
On October he did began to incorporate the Global Pass (3 months) which got him as far as Istanbul and Ankara and high up north as Kiruna in Sweden, Lapland.[0]
Seems a very cautious guy, as he was booking a night train from Budapest to Bucharest, apparently he was warned at the counter by an employee which made him very uneasy. Reminds of the story of that TEDx talk.[1]
He is clearly enjoying it so I hope the positive experiences encourage him to even go beyond Europe, like to India ;) [2]
His northenmost point seems to have been Narvik (across the border in Norway). From what I can tell, that’s almost 70km (more than 40 miles) north of Kiruna.
You’d be amazed what you can normalize, and how quickly, when you just start doing something, or living in a certain way.
I’ve lived in various different situations that seem in retrospect intolerable, but at the time were perfectly ok - for instance, in the early days of bootstrapping, I didn’t bother with a bed or a home, I just slept on the floor by my desk at the office, using my jacket as a pillow. It became normal frighteningly quickly - to the extent that when I moved into my own place a few years later, I needed cajoling to buy a mattress at the very least - things had just ceased to have a hold on me, and a bed honestly seemed like an extravagance, unnecessary, just something I’d have to move again at some point down the road.
I don’t live such a Spartan extreme now, by any stretch of the imagination - but some traces of that experience linger - but either way my point was that that became very normal for me in a matter of weeks or months. Coming back to a more normal way of life was a strange sensation.
Honestly, I can understand how homelessness works.
By the way, student dormitory cost around ~200-300 euros per month. And semester fee costs 300 euros per semester (6months). In total, it makes 3900 euros. So, the train is not the most cost efficient solution, if you are young.
So is the university experience when you are the same age as most fellow students.
I don't think one or the other is a superior way to spend ones formative years, though doing the train thing might make more sense before going to school, as he may form relationships in school that he won't want to give up for riding a train.
It's like, living with Star Trek transporter technology:
> ‘If I feel like travelling to the sea, I take the train north in the morning. If I long for the hustle and bustle of the big city, then I look for a connection to Berlin or Munich. Or I take the express train to the Alps for a hiking trip.’
I'm curious to learn more about how his feelings being so quickly satisfied makes an impact on him...
I wonder how does he actually work as a digital nomad. Internet on DB trains is massively unreliable, there are entire patches of country that are not covered by mobile signal.
> I wonder how does he actually work as a digital nomad.
I suspect the secret here is that a lot of people adopting this type of lifestyle produce really mediocre output and some way or another fit into the gaps at a large company that doesn't conduct aggressive performance reviews.
Everyone is different but I find it hard to believe that high quality code is generated from working consistently in that type of environment. Perhaps lots and lots of boilerplate.
Having met many people who work remotely and travel, you have everything from mediocre english teachers, grifters, programmers (good and bad) to over-achievers with successful lifestyle-businesses.
Lately I've been programming less and less with wifi while sitting at libraries and cafes without wifi. It's fine, just have proper dev environments, use isync for offline emails, download docs and learn to read manuals instead of stackoverflow.
Perhaps he uses tethering on his mobile. Or gets on with working for long periods without being distracted by continual distractions so that reliability of the network is less important.
The boy is 17. At that age you’re not that overwhelmed with people distracting you for no real reason. (Apart from parents, but that’s not work-related usually.)
So you can basically be offline most of the time. I envy that bliss, it’s so difficult to do when you’re much older, with kids, pets, and the family.
> Uch. TRAINS. They’re a necessary evil in many of our lives. Horrible big tin cans full of smelly people that never turn up on time and make you late for everything. The less time spent on them the better. At least for most of us in the UK, anyway.
Not my first though when I think of trains, but I'm not in the UK.
It's the British way to hate on things that are quite useful parts of their society. Trains, highways, airports, health system, garbage collection, emergency services, etc all work remarkably well and people just choose to look at the negative aspects and tell negative anecdotes. It does feel like it's counterproductive on a society level.
British trains are mostly a profit making enterprise for other European nations, rather than an actual public transport network for the people who need it.
(Their are exceptions to this and not all train companies are linked to other countries state owned railways, but many are. They get cheap travel and we get scammed)
This is just totally incorrect. Total rail subsidy in the UK is £11bn/yr. Ticket sales are another ~£8bn/yr Total TOC profits are £100m/yr. Rolling stock operating companies take maybe £200m/yr in profit but it varies.
So TOC/ROSOC profits 'take out' 1.5% of the money in the system. Saying they are 'mostly' a profit making enterprise is completely ridiculous.
Also, while the UK has privatised TOCs, Germany and other countries are also opening regional/long distance rail routes to franchising of sorts. National Express (a British company) operates a surprising amount of routes (and growing) in North Rhine-Westphalia (and probably other regions) for example. It's not just a one way thing.
I am in the UK and I certainly don't think of trains this way. I rarely have the occasion to take a train but whenever I do it seems like a special little treat: I sit at my laptop in a warm and vaguely comforting space, with a coffee, whilst a vista of the English countryside is presented to me as a film in the background.
Perhaps it helps that I don't tend to travel at peak times or on peak routes.
I always enjoyed Deutsche Bahn whenever I traveled to Germany. Such a user-friendly experience for an international tourist. Even before the smartphone era it was easy to book tickets at the machine. Just hop and go to another city and return with the night train!
The UK has both, you can buy digital tickets, you can buy tickets online and pick them up at the station, you can buy them on the digital machines at the station or at larger stations you can buy them at the service desk at the station.
There's a German rapper from the 1990's (MC Rene) that tried to turn himself into a standup comedian, and he wrote a book about doing the same a couple years ago:
Good on him, I guess? I'm happy we have a somewhat functioning high speed rail system here but I can't say I'm in a hurry to be in the ICE 24/7 for the same price as renting a flat.
And here I am spending $700 to take the Amtrak with a sleeper room one-way as a mini vacation! I admire his adventurous spirit. I’m a bit nervous to travel by myself. Particularly once I arrive in SF where I don’t know anyone, but I’ll figure it out as I go. My plan is to put the phone and laptop away for a few days and enjoy reading the Lord of the Rings while viewing some beautiful places and capturing them on film.
Sounds really cool! But I have just one question, why not stay for a couple of days in a new place to explore? Maybe he is, but from the article I’ve got an impression he’s on the move every single day. Doesn’t make too much sense, as when you arrive somewhere you have just one day. For me, it’s always not enough. I’m the opposite of that and prefer to live months in a new place, before moving to the next one.
Staying a couple of days at each place would mean hotels/hostels which would greatly increase the total cost of the endeavour. Anyway you can just return to any city at any time, so it probably isn't as important to explore the whole place the first time you visit.
Because than you do not pay 10k per year anymore (as hostels cost extra, compared to trains in his case). Also, in a year, you can stop multiple times in many places. Also, apparently, he also travelled around Europe with interrail, during which he stayed in hostels.
In the Netherlands, when I had a monthly first class ticket for my commute, I'd sometimes take the train home and back to work during the day to get work done. I was able to focus in the train much better than in the office, sometimes.
I've also considered going freelance and doing all work from the train with an unlimited ticket like this, it'd work great I think.
Does this guy have a passport? Then he has a mailing address.
He claims to work. Then he pays taxes. In which country? he has a mailing address.
At 17, I'd bet good money that his mailing address is also his parent's mailing address. This is a gap student having fun bouncing around Europe, about as nomadic as any other backpacker.
As far as I know, it is possible to have the entry "ohne festen Wohnsitz"(without a permanent residence) instead of a mailing address in a German passport and he's legally not allowed to use his parents address, if he's not there for at least 183 days a year.
But I don't really understand how this small legal detail would change the whole character of his life experience, in any case. No matter what is written in his passport, he spends the whole year in a train.
Because there are real nomads, people without any address that run into all sorts of legal difficulties, difficulties that are belittled when people write about how easy it is to live on a train 24/7. Some are "homeless" others are from cultural groups that roam. And a large number are children in government care who then must transition to adult life sometimes without the convenience of a fixed mailing address. Our systems of government and assistance are still based on legal residency at a particular point on the map. Despite all the stories about mobile professionals working wherever the please, this is a privilege enjoyed by those who retain fixed support infrastructures to which can return as needed.
Look at the "Van life" trend. The people are forced to live in their cars/vans really do not appreciate those who glamorize it. It is not an easy thing.
Anyone with two brain cells can tell the difference between a homeless person and an adventurer. Pretty much anything people do to challenge themselves sucks for someone who's stuck doing it without a choice.
Are there, in Europe? I'd love to hear more about that if you know of something. I'm living in a van (by choice) and I have had issues with getting a mailing address. Currently registered at a friends place, but won't last forever. The post forwarding service is also not reliable and does not forward all mail anyway.
I found Clevver, which appears to have a few dozen locations available in Europe. Possibly based in Germany. It looks similar to EarthClassMail in the US. https://www.clevver.io/clevvermail-pricing/
Cool, I never found anything like this when I searched. I wonder how they get around the legal issues of it.
With the upgrade to "Registered Address" it costs a whopping 79.95€/month though, so it is not really a really an option for me. But good to know that it exists.
I’m in my 30s and resident at my parents house, on a continent I spend 30 days/year on average. My company is registered there even. Most people have a “home” (or mailing address) even if they don’t live there.
I spent 10 years without setting foot in the country I have a passport for.
I spent 2 years driving from Alaska to Argentina all on tourist visas. I spent 3 years driving around Africa all on tourist visas. Technically I could have done that without paying tax anywhere, though I continued to do so because I was working towards permanent residency in another country.
I now have a passport from a country I've never been to. I've renewed my passport from the country I was born in three times without going there.
I only need a mailing address to actually pick something up, and I usually use a friends address, or even that of a hostel or campground.
> I continued to do so because I was working towards permanent residency in another country.
I'm curious, what country let you work towards permanent residency without you being physically present in it? (Sounds like you were driving around different places at the time)
He's most likely registered at his parent's address, but it's not like there's an age restriction where you're no longer allowed to live in your parent's basement or to physically be there ;)
At that age he's also mostly included in his parent's insurances, so one less thing to worry about. Taxes are deducted automatically from his wage. And to receive the wage he just needs a bank account.
but anyhow, you could plausibly get by with not paying any taxes by continuously moving countries. The real question is to which bank is the payment being made? If your an employee you'll probably have your income reported. you could skirt that, somewhat, by being a contractor, but even then, to which business, or to which bank account is being made?
Anyhow, none of that precludes him from being a nomad. it seems you have more of a bone to pick with the choice of the word nomad, which descends from 'noman' or more modernly 'nobody'. I think it has more to do with a lack of permanent community than a lack of a mailing address.
I've dreamed (and planned) on taking a 3 month trip in Japan, sleeping on first class overnight shinkansen trains. They are needle drop quiet every single day and foreigners can get unlimited rail passes for a good deal (though not as amazing as it used to be)
You can eat on the train's restaurant coach but it's expensive. But he can simply hop out at one stop, go shopping for food or to a restaurant and then hop on the next train. Usually you don't even need to leave the train station for that stuff (unless it's a village or small town).
"He travels first class, sleeps on night trains, has breakfast in DB lounges and takes showers in public swimming pools and leisure centres, all using his unlimited annual railcard."
For washing your clothes there are plenty of laundromats in cities, for visiting the doctor or dentist, you make an appointment, and then plan your travels so that you are in the right city at the right time. It's really not that complicated.
With the Bahncard 100 he can also use the public transport in cities, so it's not like he's limited to walking distance of the train stations.
...also, his overall cost of living is apparently around 10k Euros a year. The unlimited train ticket is just 3/4 of that (7714 Euros).
He got that. 10k is everything he spent in a year. I.e money spent for showering somewhere, extra food beyond lounges, and the interrail ticket when he travelled europe for some time.
>I decided to live on a train when I was 16 years old. My school days were behind me and the whole world was open to me.
That alone is amazing. Is 16 normal in Germany or did this guy graduate years earlier than normal?
Answering my own question, seems maybe they went to a "Realschule"? If I understand it correctly kind of a trade or technical school for those whose path leads into a job right away. Otherwise it's Gymnasium (funny sounding to English speakers) a regular school path that leads to University.
In Germany, you usually start school at 6 years old, with 4 years of primary. After that, you have three options:
- Hauptschule, which takes 5 years and only gives a basic degree (sufficient for working in the trades)
- Realschule, which takes 6 years and gives you a more advanced degree for apprenticeships
- Gymnasium, which takes 8 years and gives the highest degree necessary for University
With each, you also have the option to continue afterwards and work towards a higher degree. He most likely finished Realschule, although it would be possible to skip classes and finish Gymnasium by 16 (but this is exceptionally rare).
back when i left school (2010) i was 16, there was no requirement to stay in further education in UK, so wouldn't be surprised if it was similar elsewhere. i believe it has changed in UK since then though.
This is correct; one must be in full time education up to the age of 18 now. However, this does not need to be at school; apprenticeships, correspondence courses and other kind of educational programmes count too. School leaving age (for those who are not educated at home) is still 16.
So he have nothing, no home, no more belongings that a suitcase and a laptop, the ideal SLAVE of the modern time, someone who exists until he can produce for someone else, who effectively own him, then can only die since he have no more option to live. And the article seems to be a spot for this kind of existence "hey, it's cheap"...
I'm actually curious how many really have stopped a minute to imaging what does it means be homeless and not owning anything. OF COURSE IT'S CHEAP.
Nothing wrong with young people spending a bit of time to 'hack the system', 'get out there', 'do new things', etc.
As long as this is strictly a personal project, with a goal, and an exit strategy, it's absolutely fine.
He'll probably grow up to be quite a successful person, and no doubt will have learnt a fair bit this year, as well as being humbled. Being homeless is grim, but it's nice to have perspective sometimes and a heightened sense of empathy, and not constantly live life on ezpz mode.
> someone who exists until he can produce for someone else, who effectively own him
You're falsely equating ownership with exchange. He can do stuff for people, who can do stuff for him. He can choose who to do things for, and who does things for him. That's the opposite of slavery.
Allow me to depict a small game: living on trains means needing trains with nigh services, what you do if your train is canceled? You pay with a credit card, what to do if a train is canceled for bad weather and you have no working internet connection? You work on a giant platform what you do if a day that platform, who store essentially your digital life since you just have a laptop, decide to ban you for some reasons and you can just write a message in a form to them and wait days? A small anecdote: due to a storm the mobile service where I live drop. I still have fiber working, and I WFH so no issues apparently. Well, no. I've needed to access my bank and I couldn't because to login I need an SMS OTP... I couldn't login on my mobile carrier WebUI where I can read SMS independently of the phone, because to login I need an OTP via SMS. I'm the customer or a slave of their services?
When you have alternatives there is no slavery, you can pick many options all the time, you have backup between them. When you depend on single entities you are their slave, no matter how "formally free" you are. Now I'm slave of my home to live in it, to continue this "strange journey", but the home is mine, I control it, I'm a citizen of a state with certain rights and laws and so on. I have then alternatives and backups. So the slavery from my home it's not much oppressive. I have three desktops at home, two homeservers and some spare parts, so if something breaks I can switch immediately not waiting for a spare part to come by the mail or a shopping mall to open to buy it ASAP. If I depend on a laptop I have no backup and if my data are all in someone else hand I depend on them, no backup. If I have no assets I own, I depend on my source of revenues CONSTANTLY meaning I have no backup to hunt for another job if I live paycheck to paycheck. That's slavery de facto, even if formally I'm free to go.
That's just an overly broad definition. You can call anything anything if you like, but it's not helpful. Slavery is buying and selling humans.
You're describing instead a world in which everything isn't available for free, and so you have to make choices on how the resources you receive are deployed.
And sorry - I couldn't make out what the game was from your text. I don't think it particularly helps either way. It's easy to construct a game that misses an important component of reality.
Slavery is the absence of choices. Yes, owning a home means being slave of that to keep the home up, but you control it, it's an asset you depend on and you have full control on it. You typically live in a State with a certain level of stability established laws to protect private properties and so on. Meaning you have choices and backups.
Now try to imaging you works on YT, your revenues came form Alphabet for the video you publish. You produce them with a laptop in a rented office and on the go. Well, you have non backups, YT have your videos and your audience. A ban and you have no choice but to restart nearly from the ground, no insurances, laws, asset under your control and so on. Then you are a slave of YT.
I've choose to live the big city for the mountains, so I'm slave of a car to move. But I have three cars, of different brands, two moderns connected so potentially risky "not fully mine", one classic, so risky only in mechanical terms. Having choices I'm slave of "a car" but not on one in particular, so I'm free. I have desktops and homeservers, WFH if one break my data are locally available and locally usable on another, no slavery to wait for a new system get delivered of the nearest shopping mall to open to buy one in person. I have fiber and mobile with a good enough 4G/dummy 5G (700MHz, in France, it's both 4G and 5G) and no data cap issues. I'm evaluating if buying a Starlink base service might be a wise choice, so I'm not slave of a specific ISP to work/live BUT for instance to access my bank I'm slave of my mobile carrier, due to the mandatory OTP via SMS, no banks here allow classic RSA OTP or using a smart card or something else not connected anymore. That's a BIG slavery even if 99% of the time works issueless.
The difference between slavery and freedom it's not the mere presence of a choice but both choice and backups that allow you to choose without dramas. In freedom terms I can even took my life, but that's not a wise choice without drama, if I work on YT as described above I can formally change tomorrow but if it's my sole source of income it's not a choice without drama and so on.
In my mid 20s I maintained a not-too-extreme minimalistic life style where I could pack literally everything I owned into my car. I could decide to just leave and lose at most some months' worth of rather cheap rent.
I never actually did use the opportunity, but it gave me a lot of comfort knowing that I wasn't stuck somewhere, that I could at any moment just leave.
He's 17 and at that age it's just an adventure. Not everything needs to happen in the context of Marxist class struggle.
Also, 10k Euro a year for living expenses isn't actually cheap, he would spend less money with a more traditional lifestyle and renting a small flat (outside big cities at least).
No, but you have to define slavery and freedom. My definition of freedom is "being able to do something at my will" PLUS "without dramas".
If I own a home I can't relocate as easy as if I rent, of course, that's a slavery. BUT the home it's under my control and I can sell it. I have insurances if something goes wrong, and I can choose between many of them, the home is inside a State, I can't have the same home in multiple States but the State is formally a Democracy (not much in reality, but that's another broad topic) and it's stable enough, so I can sell the home and change state before being trapped in a harsh dictatorship. On contrary if I live on trains I have not much choice if a train get canceled let's say because of a storm and that's happen while I'm in a mountain area only with bank cards and no connection and no hotel nearby. As a simple example.
We are all a bit free and a bit slave, the point how much freedom we have and how dramatic is exercise it or not.
Not lifestyle for me, but it is likely not actually that different from possible rents in any bigger cities. So it might work for year or two. And after that, just get a real place.
This is less than half of my rent in London. That's not including gas and electric bills, as well as council tax! I do enjoy having a kitchen though.
"technically has no fixed abode" I think here probably actually means he's registered at his parents house. This would likely be a lot more difficult if you were truly homeless.
And no facilities most of us take for granted: a shower when you want; a washing machine; a kitchen with exactly what you want in it; private space; an actual bed....
Even then I don't really get it - he's clearly not tied to a specific location.
I'd be willing to bet that even a regular home (unit/flat/apartment/small house/whatever) can likely be rented for 1/5th of London rental rates, if you look in the right places: i.e., not in major cities.
Cities are expensive; Being able to work from "anywhere" makes it quite easy to make your money go a lot further, particularly in terms of housing, without resorting to being a glorified homeless drifter.
You probably have to add to that the cost of eating only at restaurants (either on board or at or around train stations) > 90% of the time. And I wonder how he gets his clothes washed (and dried). Laundromat? Stop by his parents' place? Maybe I should read the blog...
That sounds a bit better than it really is: according to https://www.bahn.de/service/zug/db-lounge#zutritt (apparently only available in German), only 5 DB lounges (Berlin, München, Köln, Hamburg and Frankfurt) have a "premium area" where you can get a "small snack" - all others only offer non-alcoholic hot and cold beverages.
So? It's not like the reason he uses the train is for going remote places. So he could stick to travel from/to Berlin, München, Köln, Hamburg and Frankfurt most of the time.
I think that knowing I had to make the night train or else sleep in the train station every single night would make me too nervous to enjoy the freedom of being able to visit all these places. You get to travel everywhere, but you'd better stay within a bus ride of the train station at all times. Not for me. That's me though, glad he's enjoying it so far.
I had this awesome idea: How about hosting developer conferences or game jams on "hotel trains"?
The train could go around the country (or even, say in Europe, multiple countries) picking up the attendees, stopping at various places to eat or whatever, then drop everyone off after a couple days.
that's outsourcing the commodity of "needing somewhere to live" in a creative way.
wait.. I often see that one same homeless man sitting in my bus in the last row's right seat when I am commuting back home from work
In Canada, this would be approximately the cost of a one-way ticket from Toronto to Vancouver. Our rail lines are absurdly expensive relative to flying and even driving on your own.
Be that as it may, in comparison to Germany, the distance between those two places is absurdly far, and the population density in between is absurdly low. ;)
I've always thought this should be a thing: Hotel Trains, that stop at different places for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, promoting the tourism in each area.
