[HN Gopher] Germany, France offer youth free cross-border rail p...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Germany, France offer youth free cross-border rail passes
        
       Author : rntn
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2023-06-10 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.dw.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.dw.com)
        
       | usr1106 wrote:
       | Only available for people who sell themselves to Google or pay
       | the Apple premium. Well, one could say it's a gift so don't
       | complain. No, it's paid by the taxpayers. And French/German
       | taxpayer money should not be used to make citizens less free for
       | the benefit of a US duopoly which has continuous problems to
       | comply with EU legislation.
       | 
       | P.S. I am no longer affected. I benefited from a French/German
       | youth program 45 years ago, which I am grateful for.
        
         | throwawayadvsec wrote:
         | Do you mean people owning phones?
        
           | usr1106 wrote:
           | Using the ticket requires to use a phone with either Google
           | Play or an iPhone. Alternative phone firmware (degoogled
           | Android, SailfishOS, etc.), paper tickets, smart cards or
           | anything else are not supported.
        
       | _Microft wrote:
       | Official pages can be found here in French [0] and German [1].
       | 
       | I found the conditions as described in the DW article not
       | obvious, so here is an attempt at stating them more clearly:
       | 
       | In each country, there are 30k free tickets on a first come,
       | first serve basis for people 18 to 27 years old.
       | 
       | Going forth and back multiple times between the countries is not
       | intended, people therefore need to plan a single journey with up
       | to seven days of travelling (in the sense of "using public
       | transportation") in the other country. People can choose these
       | days freely. The days also do not need to be consecutive but
       | first and last day of the journey must be within one month from
       | each other (while 1st of July is the earliest possible date for
       | departure and 31st of December the latest for returning). They
       | also need to actually depart their home country on the first day
       | and to return to it on the last day that they chose.
       | 
       | These rules seem to be in place to prevent some forms of abuse of
       | the ticket.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.passefranceallemagne.fr/
       | 
       | [1] https://www.deutsch-franzoesischer-freundschaftspass.de
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-06-10 23:02 UTC)