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.
If I would live in Switzerland or Japan I would buy a yearly unlimited first class pass and find circular connections so I can work from the train throughout the day
I don't think you'd be able to find a real equivalent in Japan.
* Rail passes do exist, but they are mostly for tourists. They are short-duration, can be relatively expensive, and often specifically exclude Japan residents.
* Night trains have mostly disappeared. Buses and airplanes have proven to be more competitive options.
I have two small children I am responsible for. The children attend school. As the responsible person, my first priority is to ensure my children are safe, well fed, happy, and ready to attend school. I have a spouse I love, and I would not want to simply drop my responsibilities onto my spouse.
I am a W2 employee, and not able to move to another country to work without getting approval and incurring unknown tax liabilities.
My employer requires I do most of my work in a secure location. I am unable to have conversations with my customers in public places, and I talk with my customers constantly.
Also, I'm fucking old, and I couldn't stand sleeping sitting in a chair when I was 18. I still can't now, unless it's my big comfy lay-z-boy.
This is something you could do at 17 that you can't at 30+, with a partner and a kid. If full remote had been an option for me at 17, I'd have likely ended up a lifetime nomad. This is that.
Depends on the willingness of the partner and the age of the kid. Tons of people travel "nomad style", and even have wild adventures around the globe for months on end with small kids.
I think your view of "tons of people" that travel "nomad style" might be skewed by social media and the rose tinted lenses that people often view others on social media through.
I know one person that travels "nomad style" 100% of the time, and the only way they can do that is by not having a partner or kids. They've tried with the partner, and it didn't work out for them.
I would much prefer my kids be well educated by my fantastic public schools, have a strong social group that they grow up with and bond with over time, and when the time comes for them to explore the world, they take that opportunity.
We do travel with our kids, but I would much rather work when I need to work, and rest and relax and travel when I am not working. I have no interest in combining work and travel.
Why bother telling people what they should be doing?
>Why bother telling people what they should be doing?
Did you miss the post of igetspam which started this thread? This is what they explicitly wished they could do, but think that they cannot because of partner+kids.
I was responding to that. I'm not sure what you were responding to. Did I reply to you or told you to do something against your will?
> 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.
Wow, is this the common attitude about trains in the UK? how dour
This is horrible and I hope it doesn't encourage anyone to do this. No friendships beyond the very shallow relationships you can develop with the workers onboard the train or the people passing through.
This feels inhumane to me. I can't imagine someone being happy doing this for any length of time.
I don't see why this would prevent friendships. You don't have to be on the train 24 hours a day - just overnight while sleeping. If you have friends in Berlin you can arrive in Berlin in the morning, spend the day hanging out with them, then head back to the station at 10pm for a night train to somewhere else.
At its best this could enable you to maintain friendship groups in multiple cities.
This is kind of what I want to do for several years with my girlfriend. Hide out from the real world on the trains of Europe and explore. Can someone tell me if this pass is Germany only or is something like this available for a lot of Europe?
It's Germany only, but Germany is pretty big. As a foreigner not sure if you'd be able to stay that long without applying for a visa, and you won't get that without a permanent address. If you know someone there you can maybe register at their address.
edit: but for the whole of Europe you do have Interrail but not sure how much it costs. I doubt you can do that every day but could be wrong.
I'm wondering about his typical daily routine as spending almost a whole day seated even in a comfier variety of train seats would make my everything hurt like hell. I know, I've done it.
I mean, is it possible to keep some sort of a healthy movement regimen like this?
Cool otherwise, if I were 20 years younger, single, and had the kind of money to do it, I'd try at least a vacation like this.
Another practical question is how would you keep your gear from getting stolen?
Sounds alright really. Less dystopian than living in Google's car park. Doesn't work with dog or family and I'm not sure about being stuck near train stations at destinations, folding bicycle would improve things. Not remotely surprised that he's a programmer.
This is essentially living subsidised by the train company who didn't expect someone to take an unlimited train ticket quite that literally. One guy doing this could be interpreted as marketing. A hundred would focus the operator's mind on words like "fair use". Drawing attention to himself like this may mark the end of this experience.
This kid is 17. What a chad! As long as he doesn't let less interesting people beat the creative spirit out of him, he's going to go places in life. I mean he's already doing so, about 800 miles worth of places per day
Great thing to do when you're young, why not. I slept on a mattress in a closet for a year. Standards increase as you age, not just because you can but because you get increasingly tired. I held out as long as I could, sleeping in cheap hostels when traveling, but after one night of drunk people coming into the dorm causing days of fatigue I realized it's time to up the standards. Or just not travel.
I believe incels co-opted and elevated Chads (using it to essentially refer to guys who have sex) and it became memed outside of just the incel community.
Exactly! My understanding is the incels believe women are responding favorably to that asshole behavior thus the connection to the original meaning but also how it tied into their obsession. Not sure that way of thinking has worked out well for anyone save for being a redemption arc for the Chads of the world.
In my exp if they're dwelling on one thing, they fell into it. Engineering a situation implies they worked out how to control things in their environment.
Not all environments are conducive to musterable control but when it lines up stuff can happen.
> Unlikely, the FAQ on the ordering page explicitly states that the Bahncard 100 can be used for "any number of trips"
They can change that though (if there's a material cost impact to them of this). They could just say from next year that you're capped at N journeys per month or something, where N is a very large number for anyone other than someone trying to live on trains.
...or they could just increase the Bahncard price, but it is already sort of a luxury item aimed mainly at businesses. It's at least more expensive than a more traditional "single lifestyle" (at least outside of popular cities). I don't think they'll run into the problem of the Bahncard 100 becoming too popular and being used to "live on the train".
In any case, it get this article generated a lot more sales than this guy could ever cost. Trains are a lot like hotels. You want to fill every spot you can, even at low marginal value because marginal cost is all but zero.
Also, 7714 Euros is expensive (it's more than I pay for a year's rent in a small appartment in Berlin for instance)
I've heard Berlin is very expensive. I guess it's overblown like some other places I've lived that have a reputation for being "very expensive": if you're really looking, you can find affordable options, but the reporting data is being mostly skewed by outrageously expensive outliers.
Berlin is a very odd city for renting. There are so many protections for renters. I have a friend who's parents bought a place there while she was doing her PhD. She got a roommate who was starting a PhD at the same time. This friend has since done a PostDoc in the US and worked nearly 5 years here (read: the original rate was set a while ago). Meanwhile, her old-roommate refuses to move out, pay more in rent or pay for utilities. Through a combination of ignoring messages (knowing that no one is in the country) and citing every renter protection one can, this person continues to pay only ~500 euro/month for rent + all utilities.
It doesn't help that her parents live in a different EU country and need to use Russian-German lawyers, who seem to be fine taking money even if they can't do much.
I imagine that cases like this have driven up the rent prices quite a bit.
I just mean that strict controls over the ability to raise prices & not letting the landlord terminate the lease after a 12-month cycle has ended would likely effect the calculations done by landlords.
A landlord may want a high price to
1) bake in future raises, if they can't be done year to year and
2) a filter to only rent to people with high paying jobs in an attempt to avoid situations where someone doesn't leave because they'll never find something as cheap.
To be clear, this is my inductive reasoning after asking this friend many questions in disbelief at her situation. I can't say definitively that this is a cause of higher rents. Nor do I mean to imply that there aren't bigger effects.
Granted, I have a fairly "old" rent contract from before Berlin became posh. I guess the kid looked at current rents in German cities and then figured out that a Bahncard 100 actually isn't such a bad deal if you don't also have to pay rent ;) And TBH, as a new experience I can understand him, but I wonder how long it will take until he grows weary of the lifestyle, German cities all look a bit run down and depressing when arriving by train. Props to him for giving it a try though.
To put this in context - The kid is 17. My daughter is 17 and she goes to school (11th grade) in Germany. I am an immigrant here so not sure how common this is in Germany but I assumed that kids at this age usually are in school. Kinda feels strange that someone so young is fending for himself and living in trains. Not saying it is bad, but just very uncommon. Also this is probably a "try it for a while" thing rather than the permanent / long-term lifestyle.
> I am an immigrant here so not sure how common this is in Germany but I assumed that kids at this age usually are in school.
It’s very common actually. As you probably know, Germany has a three tiered school system where kids move to after finishing elementary school at circa 10 years old.
Going to school is mandatory for 9 years here, regardless of graduation or not. You’ll leave Mittelschule after grade 9, so at 15-16. Realschule/mittlere Reife is usually finished after 10 total years in school, so at age ~16. Meanwhile gymnasium takes 12-13 years (depends on the state, our schools are weird), so you’d regularly be finished at 17-18 years old.
iirc the distribution across those three tiers is relatively even on average. That would mean that most are finished with the primary education at 17 or younger.
> Also this is probably a "try it for a while" thing rather than the permanent / long-term lifestyle.
Absolutely. I’m a bit of a train nerd myself, but even I wouldn’t consider this lifestyle for much longer. But as long as it’s fun for him, I bet he’s DB‘s most reliable service tester
It's also the perfect age to do something like that. No lifestyle inflation or real responsibility yet, so go and do something crazy while you're young and carefree.
I would recommend to any kid - if they can afford it/have the proper support system - to take off a year after finishing school and just explore. And if you need money, do try some freelancing and see if it suits you. And if you're done, you can always enter the 9-to-5 grind by entering the workforce proper.
And if you have a kid near you in your life, can afford it, and have no kids of your own, consider setting aside a little bit of money every month for this purpose. It really doesn't have to be a lot every month as it adds up (just make sure to invest it to not lose it to inflation).
I started college in the US at 16 (which is admittedly a bit early) but I'm not sure 17 is all that young. And, yes, this sort of feels like a gap year in Europe sort of lifestyle.
> German cities all look a bit run down and depressing when arriving by train
Not only by train unfortunately. Pretty much all of the post war modernist construction didn’t age well at all. Ironically, the most beautiful parts of most cities are often the ones that were reconstructed or somehow preserved.
€600 doesn't stretch very far anywhere in Ireland these days; you'd struggle to find a room for a fraction of 600 in a location where you can walk to a train to Dublin. Mightn't be possible at all tbh.
Are you in a rent-controlled apartment? It seems an ok price for a single room available now, but not an easy price to get for a new arrival in Berlin.
He's not the only one though. I read about a guy that spends his whole days in trains, driving the whole day through Germany. They accounted for that, I'm sure. It just these people are in, what, the 0.000001% or something?
He's subsidized by the state and other passengers, not the company.
>It just these people are in, what, the 0.000001% or something?
Exactly. It's not comfortable, it's not safe and cozy, it's not that cheap that homeless people would buy the BahnCard 100 that you couldn't find some form of cohabitation for a similar price.
And then there's the constant strikes as of now, so you might go days without shelter or need to pay for hotels which adds up quickly.
He sleeps in public train coaches (sometimes under the seats, if you look at his blog). This means he spends at least 6 hours a day unconscious - and vulnerable - in a public place that anyone can enter. Arguably less safe than sleeping at home behind a locked door.
Statistically still quite unlikely I guess, and in any case, he would know better than any of us because he's the one who slept exclusively on trains for 1.5 years ;)
How is it unlikely, i know plenty of people personally that had something stolen in the high speed train in Germany while they weren't looking. And he's sleeping in the train every day.
Well, sounds like the people you know are not the brightest.
Usually they make announcements on the stations where thefts occur to watch your belongings. (Usually where the train stays for 10-20 Minutes).
I also don't know anyone who has gotten something stolen on the train personally.
Pretty easy to reduce the chances of that with a lightweight cable lock. Just lock it around a seat post or armrest. A combination lock on the main compartment of his backpack would stop casual pilfering too.
it could be argued but then again you could argue that I'm actually the King of England. there is no question a private space would be better, and cameras or bystanders won't do jack for you until after the attack has started.
Or staff. Even if they are super efficient they 1) will never be there when the attack starts 2) will most probably not risk their own safety if the attack is violent 3) will call the police at the next station, since it doesn't make sense stopping the train in the middle of nothing.
The best way of being safe is to avoid attacks in the first place. Being in a locked, enclose space (where you and you only control the lock) is much safer than being in a public space that anybody can occupy.
Unless there was severe disruption, of course - since the lines have been so well standardised in Germany, ICE trains can travel on local lines too, so you could theoretically end up in the middle of nowhere if the train service was redirected mid-journey.
Being a confident young man can be pretty disastrous if you end up in wrong place wrong time. "The world is my oyster" levels of confidence can get you in trouble really fast. Not that it is the most likely scenario in Germany, but it is not a place where you can completely drop your guards everywhere all the time. Though I guess he is aware of the risks and acts accordingly.
DB Fernverkehr which sells the tickets and operates the long distance trains is not directly subsidized by the public (even if ultimately the public owns the company), by EU and German law. There may be some subsidies coming in indirectly via the infrastructure, but that would be more so the case for buses.
Great addition, thanks! DB is so complex, I have no clue where subsidies are applied and where not. I just imagined they'd have some tax cuts or something
All fair points, but I don't think the company minds that much. His average price is low especially for 1st class, but they do have a small number of cheap tickets you can get if you book fast enough or there isn't much demand. I once booked an 8-hour international 1st class ride for 35 euros. The full price was something like 250. There is for sure a threshold where it would be too many people, but I don't think they'd mind a few more people dropped 8k on this. First class is not that full and 8k is 8k.
On a personal note, I like trains, but not that much. One downside is that it's not guaranteed that he spends all his time in one train. It can be a bit of a distraction to have to switch trains. And also a bit tiring. Although since he I guess rides without a real destination he can just pick a train that goes across Germany, something like Hamburg - Freiburg.
Compared to the UK where a standard-class rail season ticket for me to get to London (including underground), at £8,272 p/y.. but for that, I also have the luxury of either standing in an overcrowded carriage, or if I am super lucky I get to sit in a seat that smells of urine.
After spending a lot of time in Europe, the grass definitely isn't greener.
Trains in France are not vastly cheaper than the UK, but the service pattern is awful outside the very main routes. Often huge gaps in service for parts of the day and non-clockface timetabling. Seems to be very poor utilisation of rolling stock, with a lot of the stations having trains sitting for hours doing nothing (which should really be operated more intensely to give a better service pattern).
DB has horrendous reliability problems, basically the entire network gets something similar to TPE on time performance (the worst performing TOC in the UK). ICE/IC trains are also not particularly cheap for on the day travel.
Spain's high speed lines are excellent and very cheap. But outside that the network is incredibly limited and slow, so much so that buses will almost always beat the train in journey time.
Netherlands is good, affordable, frequent services and reliable. I think NL is the only country I've been to where the system is noticeably better than the UK across a lot of dimensions.
As a regular train traveller in Germany, it averages out. It's almost exclusively the intercity connections which are delayed, but those usually run on an hourly clock. It's actually not that uncommon that I can save half an hour of travel time because I can catch a delayed ICE from the previous time slot instead of waiting 45 minutes for the next train ;)
You cannot possible rate the Netherlands good on comfort. It's cattle class, even on 'long' (for Dutch standards) haul routes. They _just_ started to operate carriages with power sockets! I rode better trains in Poland 10 years ago than in NL.
I take el cheapo French TGV (Ouigo) over any Dutch rolling stock any day.
Intercity trains have had sockets for a while, but YMMV if this wasn't on the most used tracks.
Short distance or trains that stop at towns (called sprinters) didn't. Haven't ridden a train in quite a few years so that might have changed.
The trains are mostly on time though, which is something most countries fail at. Granted Dutch people still complain about public transport, me included. Most people think it's too expensive and it takes too long to really get anywhere that isn't a direct connection. These days it is often cheaper to go by car too, especially if you are going somewhere with more than one person.
Depending on the article the Netherlands seems to be either high in the top 10 or low in the top 20.
Checked the latest WEF report I could find (2021), and it's ranked 14 on there. But that includes much more than just public transport. So not that useful.
(Travel & Tourism Development or T&T index).
NS uses a wilde variety of materiel for intercities, only a handful of new ones now that finally come with sockets. Never had a single one here at Maastricht. I did have a sprinter on intercity duty last time I went up north.
from the handfull of times I've taken Ouigo, it's just normal TGV, just without first class and sometime less convenient train stations (like outside of Paris instead of close to the center)...
Ouigo comfort is far less than any Dutch IC-class stock. Maybe the Ouigo is on par with Sprinter-class stock, but even then it’s a stretch.
Compared to German stock — yes, the German stock is nicer (mainly has to do with different usage patterns, though — Netherlands train network has been said to resemble a country-sized metro network).
Outlets — who cares, just bring a power bank — again, compare to networks like London Overground or Paris RER.
That doesn't make any sense. The UK runs 2x the services on a network of less than 50% of the size of France - so 4x the services per route km. Believe me the UK network is riddled with horrendous chokepoints too.
Most of these routes have about 1-2tph running on them max. The UK (and I'm sure many other countries) manages to run clockface timetabling (for the most part) with a lot of routes on 10tph++.
It's not the lack of clockface timetabling that is the problem per se, it's the constant huge gaps in service. Eg approx 1tph, then a big gap of 3 hours, then 1tph. It's all over the place.
But France is on the "continent" so has to manage transcontinental traffic, especially freight trains - which are very long, very heavy and very slow.
But no, it's so easy for you to just shout "it doesn't make any sense" without first wondering if you had the complete picture. The French are incompetent and wasteful, that's obvious isn't it?
Two wrongs don't make a right. If a particular taxpayer-funded road was one cent per mile for the end user as opposed to other higher-priced roads, you wouldn't say, "wow, this road is reasonably priced!" Unless you're literally just doing a travel blog
There's a lot of externalities around transit that aren't directly priced into costs vs ticket revenue.
If France decides "We want high speed national rail connectivity between cities", I'd look at it more of an entitlement / service than a profitable enterprise.
Nobody expects national healthcare services to be profitable.
(Also, both France and Germany's relatively recent experience with their national rail networks being the reason their countries are still independent sovereign states)
They want it so much that they're unwilling to pay the actual cost of a ticket lol. They have to launder the money through an intermediary and offload the cost to people who don't use the train that everybody supposedly wants
Germany and France were on the verge of collapse or being conquered but government trains saved them? Do tell.
But also, they're maybe not very sovereign when a foreign body drafts, ratifies, and enforces their laws
If everyone generally agreed that injecting messenger RNA into the eyeballs of infants provided a social benefit you would go along with it.
So you're saying that if the Nazis didn't have subsidized train rides for tourists they would not have been able to collapse the Soviet Union in 1991 and regain East Germany? Interesting. Very interesting, sir.
If you're just commuting like a normal person, there's also the Deutschlandticket, all* public transport for €49/month.
* including ferries, busses, underground, but also has exceptions that don't matter for normal commuting such as "no intercity express" and "a seat isn't guaranteed".
You need some thick skin spending so much time in regional trains. It has become so bad in crowded areas that I'm always super happy once it is over. Nevermind delays, trains being canceled, or standing in freezing temperatures at some random trainstop because the train broke down.
ICEs have become super crowded too though (in the 2nd class at least), and IME the regional train connections are actually much more reliable than the intercity connections (where long delays are quite common).
The double-decker rolling stock that the Deutsche Bahn use are very comfortable, too. There's loads of space and luggage racks in ample supply. On the upper deck you can enjoy the view better than on an ICE train. If you like looking out of the window there's no better train to be on!
I never understood why trains are so expensive in England: when I lived in Bristol I liked to spend time in Bath, it's just a ~10 minutes ride but it costed 10 pounds each way if I remember correctly... but at least you could bring your bike for free :p
Public transport in the UK is trapped in a vicious cycle. The system is poor, so people buy cars, which means fewer people use the system, which means less investment, which means the system gets even worse, so more people buy cars. Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all.
I have to go on a cross country journey this Sunday which would suit the use of the train, except there are none at all on my section of the main line early in the morning, so I shall drive all the way into London. The data may make it look as if no-one needs or wants to use the train early on a Sunday, except we might, if we had the option.
The system is suffering from too many people rather than too few; it has a problem of chronic under- and mal-investment, of which the cancellation of HS2 is just one example.
The problem is that for whatever reason rail users ""don't count"" politically.
> Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all.
In order to make driving less attractive than mass transit outside of urban cores like Manhattan or London, driving would have to be made more costly via increased tolls, removal of parking spaces, and less road capacity in conjunction with mass transit being made more frequent (every 5 to 10 minutes) with more routes.
Point to point travel in an individual vehicle is just very hard to compete with, especially on amount of freedom.
> or being unable to travel at certain times at all.
This is all fine and dandy until enough people decide to travel by car, and eventually there are traffic jams making you virtually unable to travel (by car) at certain times as well.
The times are different though. Plus the time when there tends to be the most traffic is when train fairs can be so ludicrous that it was not unreasonable for a group of 4 to consider chartering a helicopter from Bath to London instead.
You aren't lying. I recently visited London and did a day-trip by train to Oxford. I booked my ticket way ahead for 12 Pounds each way. If I had waited and bought a ticket at the station on the day of travel, it would have been closer to 80 Pounds each way IIRC. There was a bus option as well but I wasn't aware of it until I was already in Oxford. Bus was 13 Pounds each way.
More people have cars too though. Working on gut here rather than having checked any figures, but I'd wager that the proportion of rail journeys compared to car/bus journeys, for any given distance long/med/short, has fallen.
I thought this was an interesting question, so I looked it up. I don't have figures going back to the 1990s, but I've looked at the DfT's dataset on modal share NTS0409 [1] which has data 2002-2018.
Looking at number of trips/head, surface rail was 13 in 2002, rose to a pre-pandemic peak of 22 in 2018 and fell back to 15 in 2022. Bus (London + non-London local + long-distance) was 74, 48, and 37 respectively; motoring (car driver + car passenger + motorbike + taxi) was 694, 614, 512. Overall was 1074, 986, 862. So rail had a modal share of 1.2%, 2.2%, and 1.7% in 2002, 2018 and 2022.
The distance measure looks similar for rail: 482, 683, 493, from 7193, 6530, 5373. Modal share 6.7%, 10.5%, 9.2%. (I haven't done separate sums for buses and motoring.
So at least since 2002, it looks like rail has had a small but growing modal share of a steadily declining travel market, until disrupted by Covid to a place below peak but still considerably ahead of where it started.
Caveats: I haven't included the tube, and these data don't disambiguate light rail systems from 'other' (including flights). Rail remains dominated (like bus travel) by London & South East commuting, at least in number of trip terms.
There's a policy decision to cover as much as possible of the operating costs of the network from fares rather than government funding. The operating costs of UK trains per passenger-km is actually pretty competitive to European comparators but many countries fund a large part of the operating costs of their train networks from general taxation.
It is effectively true. Many European firms own chunks of the rail franchises in the UK and charge a shed load more than their local rail services are able to. Similar to the power franchises with the likes of EDF owning a large stake and charging a lot more here than they can get away with in France.
It isn't an EU thing, though it has at times been something Farage and his ilk have banged on about as if it is an EU thing, it is the way the Tories setup the privatisation of the railways (running them into the ground first as part of making the case for taking them away from the public purse (which it isn't as there are still significant subsidies involved)).
It's not an EU-bash, it's true. We sold off the railways to private companies, most of which are actually the nationalised rail operators of other countries.
<I never understood why trains are so expensive in England>
Given passenger numbers increasing in the last couple of decades have given trains huge economies scale reducing their costs and yet fares go up, public subsides go up and train companies bust. The only answer I can think of is UK trains are expensive because we are really bad at running them.
Nah, because of the awful way the privatisation is managed. Not that I think it should be privatised anyway, but really had to be it is hard to imagine it being setup in a way that benefits the passengers less.
The killer is that there are still significant subsidies involved, so we pay through the nose for bad service due to the way privatisation is arranged and also pay extra through indirect taxation too. In fact, even adjusted for inflation we pay more for the railways via taxation now than we did when they were a publicly funded industry. Funfunfun.
The subsidies go mostly to the infrastructure and currently that number is high because it includes the cost of the shambolic HS2. Indeed, Network Rail is still a state-owned company. But the majority of the expenses (trains, staff, etc) are borne by the operators and paid for by the fares.
I agree that the way privatisation has worked is poor, though.
But the way it should work is that the franchises pay in to maintain the infrastructure that they use, which is itself privately owned. The subsidies were well above pre-privatisation levels long before HS2, largely due to a couple of major incidents in 2000 or soon after (showing that the claims privatisation could fund a safe rail system was at best grossly incorrect and at worse an outright lie by those bidding for the franchises).
The public purse should not be raided more after privatisation than before, surely?
Well no, the infrastructure is not really privately-owned since Network Rail is owned by the government. But I agree that in an actual privately-run system franchises should cover all those costs. Of course that would mean even higher fares.
In any case, railways are expensive and need significant investment. In terms of financing the question is then to find the the sweet spot between fares and public spending (i.e. taxes).
Neither privatisation nor nationalisation are silver bullets. As is often the case it is a question of good management and customer focus. That being said, it is hard to imagine a system with real competition because of the very nature of railways, which tend to be natural monopolies. That being the case, state ownership may make sense, with the caveat that it should be well managed along private sector standards.
Also in the UK the way the railway system is set up is incredibly inefficient and bureaucratic so it costs us a lot more to run our system and build improvements than comparable EU countries. The railways were privatised for ideological reasons seemingly by people who didn't actually understand free markets. The privatisation was done in way that generated a lot of complicated contractual interfaces between a network of various private companies most of which can only make a profit with government subsidy.
As Boeing is finding out now with the 737 max and their Spirit subcontractor, every time you need to organise something across a contractual boundary, like who's responsible for making sure the doors don't fall off your aeroplane, it adds a lot of cost and time in contract negotiations, paperwork, inspections and inflexibility if you want to enforce what you have asked the other party to do and to understand what still remains your responsibility. Therefore when you go to a subcontractor for something you try to make sure it is very clearly defined what they are responsible for. For example, when an architect designs a skyscraper, they will try to design the cladding in a way that makes sure that watertightness is solely the responsibility of the one cladding subcontractor. If it leaks they are on the hook, simple. If you create complicated interfaces between systems then subcontractors can get out of responsibility for problems by blaming each other or the design of the interface.
So back to the railways. The government specifies where, when and how many seats a train service should have, they let contracts to train operating companies who then pay another (now government owned after it went bankrupt) company, Network Rail, to access the track. These train operating companies don't own the trains, they lease them from one of three other government created private (and now highly profitable) companies that provide all rolling stock. The train operating companies are generally responsible for light maintenance while the leasing companies are responsible for heavy maintenance. The train operating companies also provide staff for stations and branding but they don't own or maintain the stations although they are responsible for some maintenance and keeping them clean (or they used to be, it's complicated). All the money for this comes from the government as subsidy and from fare revenue paid to the train operating companies through a central clearing house. Train fares are for the most part dictated by government. Train operating companies have a little bit of freedom to sell discounted tickets to fill spare capacity, but there isn't really any on our main intercity routes and on commuter routes when people need to travel so most people are paying the government capped fares.
Here's an example of why this system is crazy. If we want to upgrade a rail line to electronic moving block signalling to increase the number of trains that can run per hour there are negotiations between the department of transport, the track owner, all the train operating companies that run on that route and their leasing companies about who is paying for the equipment to be fitted to the track and the trains, the specification to make it all compatible, when this will happen and who is responsible if things go wrong. On a complicated route like the West Coast mainline, this could involve multiparty negotiations between say 10 operators, 4 leasing companies, network rail and the department of transport. It could involve hardware and software modifications to more than 20 different types of train, some of which are up to 40 years old. Guess who is actually paying for all this anyway? The taxpayer and government dictated fares from rail passengers. There is no real free market incentive operating anywhere here to drive cost efficiencies in providing these modifications and all these negotiations need to be documented, have responsibility assigned and have procedures agreed. Guess who you need to do this? Lots of corporate lawyers... Guess how long this takes, fucking ages.
That is why we have a system where a ~350 mile journey from London to Glasgow takes more than twice as long and typically costs more than twice as much for half the legroom compared to a ~350 mile journey from Paris to Bordeaux.
A train network is like the mechanism of a clock, the trains are like the teeth on the cogs; they have a place they should be and they need to move in sync with perfectly with each other. We've designed a system that makes organising this insanely complicated with no overall coordinated strategy for improvements. A densely populated country like ours can't function properly without an efficient train network to allow its workforce to be flexible and move around easily and it affects our productivity and our ability to remain competitive globally.
>That is why we have a system where a ~350 mile journey from London to Glasgow takes more than twice as long and typically costs more than twice as much for half the legroom compared to a ~350 mile journey from Paris to Bordeaux.
Just for my own interest as an American, I can take a 350 mile journey on a train from where I live (Jacksonville, FL) to Miami. There are two trains a day, one of which takes 11 hours and costs $72, the other takes 9 hours and costs $94. Based on my experience, both of these trains are likely to be between 3 and 6 hours later than the scheduled time. How does that compare to the London to Glasgow cost and time?
London-Glasgow takes about 4h45m typically with about 7 stops. There's a train every hour between from 5am until about 6pm. Today the 5:30pm train is full, the 6:30 is £119 (€140) for a single ticket 2nd class. If you are more than 6'2" tall your knees will be wedged against the seat in front of you like on a budget airline, the ride quality on the train is too bumpy to be able to use a mouse or trackpad accurately with a laptop, you will struggle to select paragraphs of text. There is not really enough room to use a laptop anyway if you haven't booked a table. If you need to work, it will be necessary to upgrade to 1st class this costs £270 (€315). There is also a persistent fault with the toilets on this type of train that means sometimes there is a strong toilet smell.
Paris-Bordeaux takes 2h05m and is non-stop. If I go online now the next train is at 6:30pm and costs €60 2nd class. There is a non-stop train roughly every hour and there are also trains that stop 2-3 times that take about 3h but are a bit cheaper. The 2nd class seat is spacious your legs are about 5" from the seat in front and there is a table with enough space to comfortably use a laptop which has an individual socket and usb charging point per person. The ride quality is very smooth, you can easily use a laptop trackpad or mouse accurately enough to do CAD work, you wouldn't realise that you are travelling at 200mph. Edit: 1st class is available for €72 and did I mention that the train is double decker? it's just a lot cooler. Another edit: There are quite a few trains tomorrow with tickets for €29 and one train with a ticket for €12.50
Thanks for the reply. For what it's worth if you're ever in the US, Amtrak does offer very spacious seating and often enough you'll have your part of the row to yourself. Probably comparable to flying first class, I'd say.
Yes American trains are great, I've only used regional trains from New York but they were spacious and comfortable. Your Miami - Jacksonville pairing is interesting, I was thinking about it and I think the big difference between the US and the UK is that if you couldn't take the train in the UK all those people would be on the road and it would cause a traffic meltdown. Whereas in the US most people are going to either drive or fly between regional cities like that and the whole country is criss-crossed by freeways and flights that link cities together in a big mesh so you can drive or fly quite directly to your destination. I get the impression that most freeways outside of big cities have relatively predictable journey times in traffic. You can fly Glasgow/Edinburgh - London but it is also a busy route and there is no capacity in the London airports for more regional flights. Likewise pretty much all North-South car journeys in Britain are on two motorways which are very busy. The drive will currently take anywhere between 7-10+ hours depending on what time of day you travel.
Don't come across many Jacksonvillians around these parts. I use this train between Charleston and Jacksonville somewhat frequently and can second your experience with it.
That's not far off the same cost as to get to Glasgow from London, looking for tomorrow it's between £55 and £70. Significantly longer though for yourself, the train here is around 4 hours 45 mins (give or take). It's also generally close to on time, and we have delay repay for anything over 15 minutes.
My commute into Edinburgh is about 35 mins each way by train and it's £9.60 for a return (reduced for a bit because of a subsidy by the Scottish Government) normal price is about £15.00.
I'm in the US. We wanted a commuter train in my city - instead we got a very expensive toll lane built by a Spanish company. The tolls are so expensive by the mile that only the wealthy or those with a business that can write them off as an expense use the lane. If the company doesn't make enough, our taxes have to pay for the shortfall.
I actually like my commute into Edinburgh - it's very scenic, you go over the Forth Bridge and I always get a seat. There was a while when the trains were less reliable but since the Scottish government took over direct management of the rail company things seem a lot better.
You may well be correct anyway to be honest, people usually consider trains and underground as different things, and the underground is a bit of a cheat here because the stations are so close.
I'm so disappointed every time I go back there, and the bloody tickets now, ffs, it shouldn't be like air travel, the whole thing was setup by someone who's never used public transport.
The whole thing was set up by people who don't like public transport. They don't like public anything. They don't want the peasants to have nice things, because only extra-special wealthy people should have nice things.
The rail network was cut right back in the 60s by the then transport minister, who happened to have a large share in the corporation building out the motorway network.
And so on.
Completely dysfunctional politics. Utterly unsuited to the 21st century.
The British Rail system is so ridiculously over-complicated, my only conclusion is that it is deliberately designed to add as many layers of profit and obfuscation as possible.
For instance, Southern Railway is owned by Govia Thameslink Railway, which is part of Govia which also operates Gatwick Express, Great Northern and Thameslink services.
However, Govia is a partnership between the Go-Ahead Group and Keolis.
Keolis is a French transportation company owned by SNCF, the French national railway, and CDPQ (a crown company of Canada).
Go-Ahead is owned by Globalvia, a Spanish multinational transport infrastructure company, and Kinetic Group (formerly known as AATS Group) which is an Australian-based multinational bus company.
Globalvia are owned by OPTrust, one of Canada's largest pension funds; PFZW, the second-largest pension fund in the Netherlands; and USS, a large UK Pension scheme.
Kinetic Group are also owned by OPTrust, but also by Foresight Group Holdings plc a British private equity and venture capital business, supposedly focused on clean energy generation and associated infrastructure (*cough* Go-Ahead spends £100 million a year on Diesel *cough*).
Now, try to imagine how many small subsidiaries those companies have where transfer-pricing can occur and how many layers of profit are being extracted.
France's SNCF trains are run by SNCF (owned by the French Government) who also do all the track and maintenance.
Germany's Deutsche Bahn (owned by the German Government) runs Germany's trains.
Deutsche Bahn also own Arriva and were nearly banned by the UK government for how badly they ran the trains in the north of England (spoiler: they weren't).
Avanti West Coast are part owned by Trenitalia, who are mostly owned by the Italian Government. Trenitalia also owns c2c who run the London, Tilbury and Southend franchise.
The northern railways were run by a succession of similarly named companies before being returned to the UK Government as operator of fast resort.
The whole thing is a tangled mess of the worst kind of vampire capitalism: sucking up subsidies, bleeding companies dry by overloading them with debt, providing terrible service, then handing the drained husk back to the government once they've bled them to death.
I've concluded that the private companies that replaced the UK publicly owned companies are run to be a front for borrowing money and sucking up subsidies to pay to shareholders. The train companies are no better than the water companies, though they seem to be better at obfuscating what they are doing.
It's the same formula over and over again: you borrow; pay as much of it as you can out to shareholders; run a minimal service to bring in just enough money to pay the debt payments; invest the minimum to allow you to keep operating and if possible, you do it through transfer pricing with other companies in the parent companies' structure. When your creditors eventually catch up with you, you go cap in hand to the government looking for a bailout and if that fails, you hand the franchise back before forming a new company to bid again.
Southern Water, for instance, uses 1/3 each bill to pay debt payments. Even Network Rail, who are owned by the British Government, are paying 1/3 of their income to service their debts.
This is very similar to the "hollowed-out firms" of the UK who distribute more to shareholders than they generate in net income—1/5 of FTSE 350 paid out on average 178% of their net earnings after tax in 2010-1019.
It's all a con and we are chumps.
Further reading
This unfathomable financial overview of the rail system in England:
In the 1st class it's probably fine because it's mostly empty. 2nd class on the other hand... (and I bet that's the reason he's paying for 1st class ticket, he could save 3200 Euros if he bought a Bahncard 100 2nd class instead: https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard/bahncard100-2-klasse).
The UK has a concept of a BritRail pass for people from outside the UK. It's currently £568 for a month long pass.
That would be £6816 for a year, although (again) "You can use a BritRail Pass if you’re not a UK citizen and have not lived in the UK for the last six months or more.". I guess you'd have to go home before the end of the 6th consecutive month of using the passes otherwise you'd disqualify yourself.
Sounds expensive, are you coming from afar? A few years ago a monthly ticket within the London zones 1-6 (or perhaps it was 1-4) was only 150 pounds per month.
In this case it's specifically a - very out of date and no longer accurate - fetishisation of the German rail system (you can tell because those are the words used, the article author being in Europe, and the fact that internationally there is this perception that DB does a good job from people who haven't had to use it recently.)
This said, DB is probably still better than what I've heard about the UK train system, but it's long ago lost its lustre and in my experience when taking IC(E)s through it, delays and cancellations are common occurrences. While I've never got stuck there overnight, I've had several hours added to 6-ish hour journeys regularly.
I mean, it’s not even accurate at this point: DB has become something of a basket case in the last few years. The stereotype being relied on is quite outdated.
The trains go anyway, so it makes zero difference. Only if enough people stop commuting altogether will the carbon footprint of travel be reduced.
There's a fallacy where people believe the actions of an individual have any significant impact on emissions; be it travel, energy efficient homes, dietary lifestyle choices like vegetarianism and veganism. But the effect of those are all rounding errors at best. The only change can come from companies and large businesses.
> The only change can come from companies and large businesses.
the large polluting companies don't exist in vacuum. They sell what they sell because consumers are buying it. E.g. saying that Shell / BP is the largest polluter is nice but there is no way to run oil company without selling oil to the individual to be burned.
How is this any different to someone choosing to go backpacking for a year? Or do also consider that to be incredibly stupid?
It’s pretty clear from the article he’s not doing this to save money, he’s doing because he loves travelling on trains and sees it as an opportunity for exploration and adventure. There’s nothing stupid about being curious, and brave enough to indulge that curiosity.
C'mon there is nothing brave or adventurous about it, it is just first world fancy. I'm happy he enjoys it but end of story let's not make this something special, it is not.
I think it's brave and fancy and adventurous. It's actually pretty special, because I don't know anyone who's done this. we're all entitled to our own opinion though :)
He seems to live a relative "adventurous". Relative in relations to other German 17 year old.
> 2023 war einfach unglaublich! Ich habe so viele neue Erfahrungen gemacht, Freundschaften geschlossen, verschiedene Orte bereist und unterschiedliche Kulturen kennengelernt. Für mich persönlich war es das beste Jahr aller Zeiten.
also people who are retired _usually_ already own a place to live in so they don't spend money for rent/mortgage. OTOH, a 17yo will probably have less health-related expenses.
I would argue that you probably can, but not anywhere one would actually want to live in or where there is any sort of opportunities. For Finland that level means living in even poorer than average conditions in essentially dead areas.
Also not saying it's a great idea, but a remote worker could live there just fine. Technically, I mean. But why staying in a dead area if you can travel for the same money? So the dead area will probably stay dead... (and let's not get into that)
I said most of Europe, not all of Europe and the UK is known for being one of the most expensive countries in Europe. Same for Scandinavia, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark.
But there are like 20 other countries in Europe where it is totally possible. Don't judge everything based only on you backyard.
If you have to work too - which he does - not sure how much time is left to experience things, between catching trains and finding showers and switching lounges for food, and working. It is for sure a doable life but I wouldn't romanticize much its quality.
No, you really really can't afford a house with 10K euros/year anywhere in europe even eastern europe. I live in EE, rent a 30m^2 studio, costs around 3K a year (just rent + utilities).
So... you afford a house for 3k/y and say that one cannot afford one for 10k/y? I'm missing something about your point. For 10k/y you can live in most of Europe, of course not the center of Paris or Munich or Amsterdam or whatever but there is a lot of Europe outside the center of large cities.
Bulgaria's GDP per capita is €13,305/year (€1108.75/month), and the average net salary is €10,440/year (€870/month), so it's definitely possible if you're the kind of person who is willing to be arbitrarily ridiculous[0] with this kind of thing.
[0] For one thing, сигурно ще трябва да научиш български, which doesn't sound like a great use of time.
Both are enough for bills and food, or at least seem to be (I don't know how property taxes work in Bulgaria).
And given that figure I gave you was average salary and thus won't cover kids or pensioners, mostly of the people at or below that threshold will be supporting a family with that money, not just themselves, and that's the main reason they won't be living alone.
FWIW, I could manage on €10k/year even though I live in Berlin, but I'm (a) weird and (b) also living with someone in an apartment. Still more space each than if we were trying to live on a train, though.
Back in the UK, you can also find cheap actually-a-house houses despite the nonsense that is UK housing: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/144969266#/?channel=R... (£380 ~= €444 / month) — I think £332/month should just about cover one person's food and bills, including council tax, in the UK, so I'd be surprised if one couldn't do at least that well in Bulgaria, where 5% of the population have an income of €208/month or less.
10k covers all that in "most of Europe"? I'm more than a little skeptical of that claim without some expansion, and also a little curious if what you're saying is true.
The net after-tax salary in France is €2,450, and in Germany it's €2,750, compared to the €850/mo this kid spends.
I can't see how you could survive long-term on around 1/3 of a nation's average salary, even in the most rural of villages with hardly any amenities, rent alone is going to take up the majority of your budget.
You could probably get by reasonably well in Greece, and could live very well in the Balkans.
10k/12 is 833. Now let's say half or less of that to rent+etc. possible in certain not so desirable areas. Leaves you around 10€ a day for food and then 100€ for other stuff like used clothing and so on.
With 850€/month you can pay rent (a small apartment for one person) and bills in more or less half of Germany, same for France. The average net after tax have no meaning in this context.
True, it doesn’t. But the average rent in Germany is 780€/mo without heating, electricity or internet. So realistically people spend on average a 1000€/mo on living.
Realistically this living on a train thing isn’t a sustainable lifestyle, but it certainly is a fun adventure
If people spend 1k/mo on average it means it is totally possible to spend 850. As I said it is possible to spend 850 or even less in a half of the country. Average, average, average... what an average world.
imo it depends. It is possible to live with this money in most eastern&southern europe. In western/north it's harder, idk about prices but I suppose in smaller cities/bigger villages where demand is lower it should be doable too
I don't know if you're British since this seems to echo the weird comments at the beginning of the article, dissing trains for apparently no particular reason.
But no, he's likely been sleeping in beds since he's first class in night trains, in 3-bed compartments that generally have showers as far as I know. The lights can obviously be turned off.
From his blog: "I spent many nights trying to figure out the best way to sleep in first class. In the end, sleeping on an air mattress under the seats proved to be a good idea."
Yes. DB doesn’t operate any sleeper cars. All sleepers operating in Germany are by international corporations (ÖBB, etc). But they aren’t covered by a DB BahnCard 100.
The trains he mentions are just regular ICEs that operate for some overnight trips.
I can imagine how this can be reasonably comfortable in an older ICE1 in first class, but i wouldn’t want to sleep on ICE4 seats for extended periods of time
Lasse travels 600 miles a day throughout Germany aboard Deutsche Bahn trains. 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.
‘I’ve been living on the train as a digital nomad for a year and a half now,’ Lasse told Business Insider recently.
He has a blog post about sleeping on night trains. He doesn't pay extra for a couchette or compartment, he sleeps in a normal compartment laying down over 3 seats or on a wide luggage rack with an air mattress.
Sleeper trains need a supplement and are often booked out in advance, so he sleeps on the night ICE trains (https://leben-im-zug.de/howto-nachtreise-im-ice/). These are regular trains with standard seating only, all lights on and announcements for the (frequent) stops at normal volume. He mentions that he sleeps on an air mattress on the floor.
There are some sleeper trains still in Germany - although you need to pay a supplement on top of the annual train-ticket to use them. It would limit you quite heavily to certain transport coridors though.
As mentioned elsewhere: none of these are free with the BahnCard 100, and most are fully booked quite a while in advance. He sleeps in regular night trains on the floor or on some seats, not in bunk or bed on sleeper trains.
