[HN Gopher] I spend PS8,500 a year to live on a train
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I spend PS8,500 a year to live on a train
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 362 points
Date : 2024-03-05 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (metro.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (metro.co.uk)
| Gasp0de wrote:
| So he's been sleeping in an uncomfortable plastic chair with the
| lights on for the past year. The things you can do while you're
| still 17.
| hashtag-til wrote:
| But hey... all that for "just" 8500 GBP! /s
| NeoTar wrote:
| 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.
| sva_ wrote:
| Here's a handy map for night trains
|
| https://nachtzugkarte.de/
| Freak_NL wrote:
| 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.
| seszett wrote:
| 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.
| NeoTar wrote:
| From what I can see it just says he sleeps on the 'night
| trains' which are any trains that operate overnight.
|
| If you restricted yourself to sleepers, there is quite a
| broad network across Germany, but still not comprehensive
| (https://assets.static-
| bahn.de/dam/jcr:5e469db8-ee74-46b0-a27...)
| bradyat wrote:
| 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."
|
| https://leben-im-zug.de/meiner-erster-monat-mit-der-
| bahncard...
|
| So I guess he really is just sleeping in the regular
| compartment rather than a sleeper berth.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Yes. DB doesn't operate any sleeper cars. All sleepers
| operating in Germany are by international corporations
| (OBB, 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
| gbin wrote:
| He mentioned night trains and how it is important to catch one
| at the end of the day so I imagine he is sleeping in bunk beds
| at least.
| eginhard wrote:
| 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.
| dave333 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://leben-im-zug.de/howto-nachtreise-im-ice/
| defrost wrote:
| At least you got his age correct. 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.
| Daviey wrote:
| Compared to the UK where a standard-class rail season ticket for
| me to get to London (including underground), at PS8,272 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.
| ben_w wrote:
| If you're just commuting like a normal person, there's also the
| Deutschlandticket, all* public transport for EUR49/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".
| k1ck4ss wrote:
| // all* public transport for EUR49/month.
|
| not true. ICE trains for example (see pic in article) are not
| part of the deal.
| elaus wrote:
| That is _literally_ the exception listed in the asterisk
| text ("all*") one line below the text you quoted
| ("intercity express" is abbreviated ICE).
| sva_ wrote:
| 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 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!
| Prcmaker wrote:
| Damn, 49euro/month seems downright reasonable. I used to pay
| more, a decade ago, for a student ticket in Australia.
| pera wrote:
| 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
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Simple, they're run by European train operators to subsidise
| their national networks.
| williamdclt wrote:
| > to subsidise their national networks
|
| Do you have a source? That's an extraordinary claim, the
| sort of thing I'd expect to find in Nigel Farage's bag of
| lies
| domh wrote:
| Here's one article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davekeat
| ing/2019/08/15/almost-a...
|
| I believe it's a little out of date now, as some of the
| lines have been renationalised due to failures of the
| private sector.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "to subsidise their national networks" is a framing, but
| "for profit" is the simple truth of train operators in a
| privatized system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arriva_UK_Trains :
| subsidiary of DB
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C2c : subsidiary of
| Trenitalia
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avanti_West_Coast : part
| owned by Trenitalia
|
| And so on.
|
| (Don't forget that the real profit ends up with the
| "train landlords", the ROSCOs:
| https://www.leasinglife.com/features/who-owns-the-trains-
| ros... ; all of them are parented in Luxembourg for tax
| reasons)
| dspillett wrote:
| 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)).
| blibble wrote:
| > it is the way the Tories setup the privatisation of the
| railways
|
| which they did to implement... EU Directive 91/440
| ("First Railway Package")
|
| yes, the UK tended to gold plate EU regs, but the spark
| was the EU
| drcongo wrote:
| 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.
| pera wrote:
| Bristol <-> Bath is GWR, which is owned and operated by the
| British company FirstGroup; they're mostly known for First
| Bus but they do trains too.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Because the government decided to stop subsidising the
| railways.
|
| Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because they
| are subsidised.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because
| they are subsidised.
|
| Everywhere you see cheap road travel it's because they are
| subsidised.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| muh roads
| dspillett wrote:
| 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.
|
| A quick reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financing_
| of_the_rail_industry...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| dspillett wrote:
| 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?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| 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.
| willyt wrote:
| 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.
|
| </rant ends>
|
| Edit: corrected missing word
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >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?
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| 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.
| riknox wrote:
| That's not far off the same cost as to get to Glasgow
| from London, looking for tomorrow it's between PS55 and
| PS70. 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.
| willyt wrote:
| 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
| PS119 (EUR140) 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 PS270 (EUR315). 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 EUR60
| 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
| EUR72 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 EUR29 and one train
| with a ticket for EUR12.50
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| 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.
| willyt wrote:
| 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.
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| 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.
| secretsatan wrote:
| 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.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| 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.
| arethuza wrote:
| My commute into Edinburgh is about 35 mins each way by train
| and it's PS9.60 for a return (reduced for a bit because of a
| subsidy by the Scottish Government) normal price is about
| PS15.00.
| octopusRex wrote:
| 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.
| arethuza wrote:
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Is this Dallas or Houston?
| petercooper wrote:
| 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.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| More people use trains than in the 1990s.
| dspillett wrote:
| 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.
| pmyteh wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-
| sets/tsgb01-m...
| walthamstow wrote:
| More people are alive than in the 90s.
| gspetr wrote:
| > 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.
| jen20 wrote:
| 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.
| brewdad wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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.
| badpun wrote:
| UK's number of cars per capita is not much different from
| countries in Europe which have much better services,
| though.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > 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.
| jen20 wrote:
| Indeed, Bath to Oldfield Park was (is?) the most expensive
| train journey on a per-mile basis possible in the UK.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I always thought it was Covent Garden to Leicester Square
| on the underground. It's about 250 metres.
| jen20 wrote:
| Yes, seems that my info there is well out of date (though
| when I last lived in the UK, the underground is on a
| different fare regime).
| walthamstow wrote:
| 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.
| sambeau wrote:
| 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 PS100 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:
|
| https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/04/A-financia...
|
| This summary of who owns the British Railways:
|
| https://weownit.org.uk/who-owns-our/railways
|
| This article about water profits:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-
| interactive/2023/...
|
| Hollowed-out firms:
|
| https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2021-02/Tran.
| ..
| gandalfian wrote:
| <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.
| waihtis wrote:
| 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.
| Daviey wrote:
| Certainly outside London - shortest journey time is 1h9m, 3rd
| stop.
| waihtis wrote:
| still, its an insane price hike
| netsharc wrote:
| Germany has rail "discount cards", including for 100%, first
| class for 7714 euro/year(1)
|
| Tbh I can't imagine it to be relaxing being cooped in your seat
| the whole day, with people around you. (1)
| https://int.bahn.de/en/bahnbusiness/offers/businesscards/bah...
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| blibble wrote:
| you could do this with 14 day 1st class all line rovers for a
| cool PS36k/year
| martinald wrote:
| 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.
| unkeen wrote:
| The UK is part of Europe, too.
| pxeger1 wrote:
| In the UK the word "Europe" is commonly understood in
| certain connected to mean continental Europe or the EU, in
| contrast to the UK.
| jon-wood wrote:
| It's really not. There was a little falling out that
| occurred in 2016, you might have heard of it.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| EU and Europe are not the same thing (one is an
| organization, the other is a continent).
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Yes and everyone understood what was meant from context
| without the pedantry.
|
| Do you really think people don't know which continent the
| UK belongs to?
|
| Do you think people are in danger of thinking the UK is
| actually in Africa or Asia when the colloquialism of
| 'Europe' is used?
| JackSlateur wrote:
| Do you really think people don't know which continent the
| UK belongs to?
|
| Have you heard of americans ?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| What better place to be overly pedantic than the HN
| comment section ;)
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > DB has horrendous reliability problems
|
| 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 ;)
| aredox wrote:
| France doesn't get clockface timetabling because the topology
| of the network doesn't allow it - to mamy chokepoints.
|
| (Of course when I say doesn't allow it, I mean they could,
| but it would be very impractical and require major
| tradeoffs.)
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I took a French TGV (the high speed one) a few times last
| year, and it was still pretty nice. Tickets were quite
| reasonably priced too.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| Yeah, it's subsidized by taxes on French people and runs at
| a loss
| johnwalkr wrote:
| That's true of most transit and also true for roads.
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| 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
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Is it a wrong?
|
| 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)
| iraqmtpizza wrote:
| 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
| brnt wrote:
| > Netherlands
|
| 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.
| baud147258 wrote:
| > el cheapo French TGV (Ouigo)
|
| 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)...
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| IME, seat comfort on Ouigo is far less than e.g. Thalys
| or TGV Lyria.
|
| Haven't been on regular TGV to compare, but it can't be
| much worse than Ouigo...
| BigJ1211 wrote:
| That really depends on the train you were taking.
|
| 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).
| brnt wrote:
| 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.
|
| It's abysmal.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| 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.
| brnt wrote:
| That's so obviously incorrect that it'd be funny if those
| sprinters weren't so mightily uncomfortable. I guess it
| takes a Calvinist to prefer them.
| kragen wrote:
| does 'season' mean '3 months' or 'year'
|
| i'm not from the uk
| Daviey wrote:
| Sorry, I wasn't clear. It was a year.
| kragen wrote:
| thank you!
| alexfoo wrote:
| The UK has a concept of a BritRail pass for people from outside
| the UK. It's currently PS568 for a month long pass.
|
| That would be PS6816 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.
|
| https://www.thetrainline.com/trains/rail-passes/britrail-pas...
|
| The All-Line-Rover would be the version for anyone who does
| live in the UK: http://www.railrover.org/pages/all-line.html
| and it is much more expensive.
| 01acheru wrote:
| All fine and good, I hope he likes it but EUR10k is a lot of
| money to live more or less like a beggar.
|
| With EUR10k/y you can afford a house+food+bills in most of Europe
| and in many places it is way cheaper than that.
|
| So... yeah, I find it incredibly stupid.
| alt227 wrote:
| 10k Euro per year is what, 800 Euro per month?
|
| Im in the UK so I work in pounds. 800 Euro = PS684.29
|
| I guarantee you that you cannot get house, bills, and food for
| this amount per month.
|
| I actually think its a pretty smart and cheap way to live if
| you are young and can handle the requirements.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| soco wrote:
| 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)
| dagw wrote:
| _I guarantee you that you cannot get house, bills, and food
| for this amount per month._
|
| That is basically the minimum state pension, which some
| people do live on, but it is a pretty miserable existence.
| riffraff wrote:
| 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.
| beejiu wrote:
| That's because they get other benefits. The rent will be
| paid for with housing benefit. You can't typically get that
| if you are working age.
| 01acheru wrote:
| 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.
| swarnie wrote:
| PS680 is about what i paid for a room in a HMO 20 miles
| outside the M25 a decade ago.
|
| Providing German healthcare can keep up with all the
| antibiotics he'll inevitably need it sounds like a good deal.
| redeeman wrote:
| do elaborate on the needs for antibiotics
| solumunus wrote:
| It's not that much cheaper and you also need to factor in the
| fact that realistically you can't even cook your own food.
| There are hidden costs.
| dagw wrote:
| With a first class ticket you can generally eat for free at
| the 1st class lounges at the larger train stations.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| 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.
| 01acheru wrote:
| It absolutely is in all of southern Europe except the center
| of some large cities, same for eastern Europe, rural France
| and Germany, etc.
| Shrezzing wrote:
| The net after-tax salary in France is EUR2,450, and in
| Germany it's EUR2,750, compared to the EUR850/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.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Certainly survive, but not exactly thrive.
|
| 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 10EUR a day for food and then 100EUR
| for other stuff like used clothing and so on.
| 01acheru wrote:
| With 850EUR/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.
| moooo99 wrote:
| True, it doesn't. But the average rent in Germany is
| 780EUR/mo without heating, electricity or internet. So
| realistically people spend on average a 1000EUR/mo on
| living.
|
| Realistically this living on a train thing isn't a
| sustainable lifestyle, but it certainly is a fun
| adventure
| 01acheru wrote:
| 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.
| Moldoteck wrote:
| 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
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > EUR10k/y you can afford a house+food+bills in most of Europe
|
| I don't see how that can be true if you want to live alone.
| Maybe in some of the poorer countries outside the EU.
| 01acheru wrote:
| I'm from Italy and lived alone in Greece, Spain and Portugal
| so I know it is surely possible. And lived in cities not in
| the middle of nowhere.
| jahnu wrote:
| You could do it here in Vienna. Would be basic but not
| terrible at all.
| ben_w wrote:
| Bulgaria's GDP per capita is EUR13,305/year
| (EUR1108.75/month), and the average net salary is
| EUR10,440/year (EUR870/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, sigurno shche triabva da nauchish
| b'lgarski, which doesn't sound like a _great_ use of time.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| Even in Bulgaria 10K euros per year isn't going to get one
| a whole house + utilities + living expenses(food etc).
| ben_w wrote:
| You're saying nearly half the workforce of Bulgaria
| doesn't have those things?
| redeeman wrote:
| could be done in denmark
| jahnu wrote:
| His motivation isn't primarily about saving money but about
| experiencing lots of places and things.
| soco wrote:
| 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.
| avianlyric wrote:
| 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.
| 01acheru wrote:
| 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.
| alt227 wrote:
| >let's not make this something special, it is not.
|
| In your opinion. I think its pretty cool and would have
| loved to do this when I was 17.
| fragmede wrote:
| 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 :)
| Mashimo wrote:
| Mhh, I disagree https://leben-im-zug.de/mein-
| jahresrueckblick-2023/
|
| 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. Fur mich personlich war es das beste Jahr
| aller Zeiten.
|
| Sounds rad.
| Mashimo wrote:
| I would not do it.
|
| But he is young and everyday another place. Try going skiing
| and visiting North See multiple times per year AND have a place
| to live.
| _joel wrote:
| PS800 a month in the UK wouldn't clear the vast majority of
| peoples' rent, let alone bills and food on top of that.
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| 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).
|
| I live in one of the cheapest countries in EE.
| 01acheru wrote:
| 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.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| 3k/y was for a 30 sq. m studio flat not a house.
| shinryuu wrote:
| 10k euro / year will give a small apartment in a large city in
| Germany if that.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| But you can't tik tok about living in a regular house and
| paying regular bills. And tik tok is probably where 8500/year
| comes from ...
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Seems to be cheaper 7,714 euros :
| https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard/bahncard100-1-klasse
| NeoTar wrote:
| If he's paying for sleeper trains, that's a supplement on top
| of the Bahncard 100.
| patall wrote:
| 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.
| raphman wrote:
| more information:
|
| - Lasse's blog (in German): https://leben-im-zug.de/
|
| - r/de thread (in German):
| https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/1b4syao/dieser_17j%C3%A...
| andrewstuart wrote:
| I'm not telling my son about this or he'll do it.
| op00to wrote:
| This is awesome. I love trains, the German trains more so. Wish I
| could go back in time and do this!
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Why not now?
| igetspam wrote:
| 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.
| coldtea wrote:
| 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.
| op00to wrote:
| 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?
| coldtea wrote:
| > _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?
| op00to wrote:
| 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.
| Mashimo wrote:
| He seems happy :D
| Ekaros wrote:
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| 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...
| dagw wrote:
| _the cost of eating only at restaurants_
|
| The article says he often eats (for free) at the 1st class
| lounges at the train stations
| rob74 wrote:
| 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, Munchen, Koln, Hamburg and Frankfurt) have a
| "premium area" where you can get a "small snack" - all
| others only offer non-alcoholic hot and cold beverages.
| coldtea wrote:
| 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, Munchen, Koln, Hamburg and Frankfurt most of the
| time.
| stephenr wrote:
| "Eating at the first class lounge" doesn't quite mean
| what it sounds like though, if the reality is "get a
| small snack".
| RLN wrote:
| 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.
| smeej wrote:
| He's only 17 years old, too, so it's not as though being
| registered at his parents' house would be unusual.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This is less than half of my rent in London._
|
| For exchange of no fixed location, and just a single tiny
| sleep room, though.
| stephenr wrote:
| 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....
| coldtea wrote:
| Yeah, like for 1/5th of the rent price, it would make
| more sense...
| stephenr wrote:
| 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.
| walteweiss wrote:
| 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.
| patall wrote:
| 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.
| dagw wrote:
| 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.
| corobo wrote:
| 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 :)
| fastball wrote:
| > digital nomad
|
| > NAS
|
| I think that is cheating on the nomad thing a _lot_ a bit.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| No more than using cloud services.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > where else would I keep the NAS?!
|
| In a colocation?
|
| I mean, I guess I get what you are trying to say, by the NAS is
| the least compelling reason to keep an address somewhere.
| corobo wrote:
| 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
| asynchronous wrote:
| Where do you find a flat that cheap? Genuine question, housing
| in the US is borked currently.
| corobo wrote:
| A small town (~70k pop) in the middle of England. Pre-covid
| the pay in local IT was quite a hindrance (PS25k/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 :)
| shankr wrote:
| Wherever the pay is proportionally lower. If people are
| making 1500 bucks then charging them 2000 won't work.
| kragen wrote:
| a colo will host your nas in a virtual machine for EUR5 a month
| or in a physical machine for EUR30 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 EUR150 a month
| moooo99 wrote:
| They put his yearly cost at ~9900EUR which comes out to
| ~830EUR/mo. So 300EUR/mo cheaper would come out at around
| 530EUR/mo. At that price you could get a studio apartment in
| many cities or at least afford to live with 1-2 roommates.
| kragen wrote:
| 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 EUR830/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
| ballenf wrote:
| Kind of ironic that the train is a colo for people. A mobile
| colo.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| I'm looking to upgrade to a 2U apartment soon
| walteweiss wrote:
| 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.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| 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
|
| https://www.eurail.com/en
| jack_riminton wrote:
| 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
| justincormack wrote:
| Getting better again slowly after a bad period.
| mike_hock wrote:
| That's what she says every month.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| To what are you referring? The Interrail/Eurail scheme
| getting better again after a bad period?
| bergie wrote:
| 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.
| mike_hock wrote:
| 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.
| interludead wrote:
| It is sounds tempting but me personally could not imagine a
| life like that even though it gives him sence of freedom..
| madaxe_again wrote:
| 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.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| But without beds in night trains, I would imagine it would
| either get very costly or very tiring very soon
| dav_Oz wrote:
| 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]
|
| [0]https://leben-im-zug.de/mein-jahresrueckblick-2023/
|
| [1]https://youtu.be/R7vmHGAshi8?&t=778
|
| [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippie_trail
| teddyh wrote:
| > _high up north as Kiruna in Sweden_
|
| 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.
| kkfx wrote:
| 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.
| andy99 wrote:
| > what does it means be homeless and not owning anything.
|
| Freedom?
| k1ck4ss wrote:
| so, living in a home I own makes me lack some sort of
| freedom? If yes, what would be it?
| bosie wrote:
| If money is of no constraint I guess nothing. Otherwise
| moving is not easy anymore
| ZaoLahma wrote:
| The freedom to decide one day to just leave.
|
| 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.
| protomolecule wrote:
| Hunger, exposure to the elements, illness, death.
| andy99 wrote:
| I missed that part of the article. What are you talking
| about?
| protomolecule wrote:
| I'm talking about what it means to be homeless and not
| owning anything.
| dmos62 wrote:
| Is a home and belongings enough to emancipate a slave?
| kkfx wrote:
| 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.
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| 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.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The opposite? Isn't the person who needs to maintain a home and
| have lots of possessions more of a slave?
| kkfx wrote:
| 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.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > 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.
| kkfx wrote:
| 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 is.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| He's 16.
|
| > 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.
|
| Congratulations on spotting what "wage slavery" is only 150
| years after Marx.
|
| > really have stopped a minute to imaging what does it means be
| homeless and not owning anything. OF COURSE IT'S CHEAP
|
| It's more often appallingly expensive, especially since many
| jurisdictions take it as a license to destroy your property.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| dappermanneke wrote:
| new novelty lifestyle just dropped
| alpenbazi wrote:
| awesome, i'd like to see him dating that way, and showing his
| desired partner THIS
| kristov wrote:
| 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.
| troupo wrote:
| I wonder more how he keeps his clothes and underwear clean :)
| Slartie wrote:
| Washes them by hand in the wash basins of the DB lounges, to
| which he gets free access with his ticket.
| stephenr wrote:
| Does that ticket also give him free access to a _dryer_? Or
| is he just going to hang his clothes up in the train for
| everyone to enjoy?
| cykros wrote:
| Probably the same way most people living in city apartments
| do it. Laundromats.
| coldtea wrote:
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Every sizable city has a couple of laundromats with washers
| and dryers. He probably has a favorite one he just travels to
| once a week.
|
| In a pinch he could hand-wash them, but I imagine drying
| might be an issue with that.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| He could also rent a couple of stash places with clothes and
| stuff like a movie undercover agent :)
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| That would be his family's places?
| oven9342 wrote:
| He can visit relatives and friends whenever he feels like, no
| matter how far away they might be.
|
| Breakfast in Berlin, Dinner in Munchen.
|
| His exit strategy is probably the same as mine, his bedroom at
| mom and pop's hotel
| kristov wrote:
| 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.
| coldtea wrote:
| 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.
| brandall10 wrote:
| 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.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| 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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Eg: one of his friends has a life crisis and just needs
| to talk to someone.
|
| He can hop on the train and trivially go to them. He
| probably sees his friends more than many others who are
| separated by long distances.
|
| In a world of instant comms, he doesn't need to be tracked
| down. He can be summoned and in a few hours, appear.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| 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.
| corobo wrote:
| 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 :)
| jesterson wrote:
| > people need people
|
| 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
| coldtea wrote:
| They kind of do according to medical/mental health statistics
| though, even accounting for the personality type.
| pimlottc wrote:
| I think you meant "I tend to differ", "concur" means you
| agree.
| jesterson wrote:
| You are right - thank you fir correcting me
| dorkwood wrote:
| I'm going to assume when you say "people don't need people"
| that you're talking about social contact.
|
| My question is: why do you post on HN for others to read? Why
| not just write your thoughts in a journal and keep it to
| yourself?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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).
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| 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.
| true_religion wrote:
| He is self employed and 17 years old. I don't think he making
| quite as much as some might imagine.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > Even in Germany, a software dev with a burn rate of 10k a
| year must be seriously in profit each month.
|
| That comes down to ~840EUR per month. Unless you live deep in
| the countryside, life is not going to be much cheaper as a
| non-nomad.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Brave move, but I wonder how he keeps or makes new
| friendships and deeper relationships_
|
| Probably as well as the average not-train dwelling person:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connect...
| interludead wrote:
| There are people who enjoy getting to know a full of new peopel
| everyday and do not need that kind of connection
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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.
| Heinrich_zHM wrote:
| I'd have to assume he spends more time with his family currently.
| The DB is constantly striking at the moment.
| k1ck4ss wrote:
| 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
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| 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.
| safety1st wrote:
| 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
| Zetobal wrote:
| Or he just dwells on this one thing for the rest of his life
| like many others did before him...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 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.
| martindbp wrote:
| 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.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Does "Chad" have positive connotations now? When I was
| younger it was fairly derogatory.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/virgin-vs-chad-meme/
| aidenn0 wrote:
| So it went from "asshole" to "asshole who has lots of
| sex" to "guy who has lots of sex"? That kind of makes
| sense.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| 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.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| 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.
| carlmr wrote:
| >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.
|
| I'd say this is a rounding error
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > it's not safe and cozy
|
| What's unsafe about it?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Ending up at "random" train stations at weird times with
| all your experience belongings
| pixxel wrote:
| He sounds like a confident young man; not one who quivers
| at the thought of travelling.
| temporarara wrote:
| 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.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Given that he mostly seems to travel by high speed train
| (ICE) every station he could possible end up
| unintentionally would be a relatively major one
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 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.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| 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.
| halper wrote:
| Very arguably. Presuming the train has cameras, staff and
| other people on it, it could be argued it's safer than
| sleeping in a house.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| 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.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Armed train robberies are not all that common in Germany
| though.
| pdpi wrote:
| In his position, train robberies aren't the first problem
| that comes to mind. Just somebody stealing my backpack
| with all my earthly possessions.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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 ;)
| carlmr wrote:
| 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.
| albert180 wrote:
| 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.
| mrandish wrote:
| 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.
| ant6n wrote:
| 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.
| ta1243 wrote:
| The marginal cost of the journey is tiny. If he didn't pay the
| PS8500 then the trains would still run.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Drawing attention to himself like this may mark the end of
| this experience.
|
| Unlikely, the FAQ on the ordering page explicitly states that
| the Bahncard 100 can be used for "any number of trips":
| https://www.bahn.de/angebot/bahncard/bahncard100-1-klasse.
|
| 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 guess he's eating the additional cost for a 1st class
| Bahncard 100 because the 1st class usually isn't as extremely
| overcrowded as the 2nd class.
| me_me_me wrote:
| 7714 per year is 600 per month
|
| EUR600/month In Dublin would get you a 1m2 closet and shit
| bucket
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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.
| rockyj wrote:
| 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.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Or he could become a drifter and graduate to roomier
| freight train cars. Probably cheaper too.
|
| I don't know if that's as viable a lifestyle in Europe as
| it is in the US, though.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > 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
| MenhirMike wrote:
| 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.
| sakjur wrote:
| 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).
| moooo99 wrote:
| > 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.
| mandmandam wrote:
| There is literally _nothing_ [0] available in Dublin City
| to rent for 600 /month.
|
| 0 - https://www.daft.ie/property-for-rent/dublin-
| city?showMap=fa...
| theBobBob wrote:
| That is for renting a whole property. You will have to
| share with someone for EUR600 per month. Try the
| "Sharing" option in Daft for that.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| Lowest I'm seeing in Blanchardstown for a room is EUR160
| (the lower amounts are twin shares)
|
| Lowest I'm seeing in all of Dublin is EUR140 once you
| exclude twin rooms, monday-to-friday terms and whatever
| "Dublin Host Families" is
| me_me_me wrote:
| I have sneaking suspicion those are per week prices
| Chris2048 wrote:
| But you're cherry picking a city with a housing crisis (and
| a shit, corrupt government with no planning skills).
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| You can get a one-time train ticket from Dublin to a
| cheaper place for a fraction of that.
| JansjoFromIkea wrote:
| EUR600 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.
| chippiewill wrote:
| > 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| ...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".
| TylerE wrote:
| 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.
| letsdothisagain wrote:
| Tell me you're a landlord without telling me you're a
| landlord.
|
| "How dare this fucker weasel his way out of giving me 50%
| of his income! That's MY money!"
| TylerE wrote:
| How do you do that and not screw over someone who has to
| make two transfers each way to work?
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _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.
| obmelvin wrote:
| 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.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I imagine that cases like this have driven up the rent
| prices quite a bit._
|
| Can you elaborate on why you imagine this?
| obmelvin wrote:
| 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.
| dannyobrien wrote:
| 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.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> 7714 Euros is expensive (it's more than I pay for a year's
| rent in a small appartment in Berlin for instance)_
|
| What apartment can you still get for less than 640 Euros in
| Berlin today?
| rocketbop wrote:
| The apartment you got several years ago and still have.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| That's why I said "which you can get" not "which you
| already have" ;)
| andai wrote:
| Is the rest of Germany cheaper? That's wild, my student room
| in Holland ten years ago cost not much less than that.
| locallost wrote:
| 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.
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| >I once booked an 8-hour international 1st class ride for 35
| euros.
|
| If you book like 2-3 weeks ahead, there's plenty of 35 EUR
| first class tickets on the Warsaw-Berlin trains.
| philshem wrote:
| It's basically VanLife in a country with public transport.
| ncr100 wrote:
| Sort of, with much less labor to go places.
| 627467 wrote:
| 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 PS8500/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.
| unglaublich wrote:
| People overusing their subscriptions are compensated by people
| underusing them.
| lupire wrote:
| People who exercise are overusing their share of air. People
| with more children are overusing their share of sunlight.
| broeng wrote:
| According to you, when does a child earn their own share of
| sunlight, so their parents are not "overusing" their share?
|
| Is it at a certain age, or is that only for children born
| latest at $YOUR_BIRTHYEAR?
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It's illogical to assume that was literal.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| 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.
| BSDobelix wrote:
| >seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future
|
| That`s why he's under the seats, but let's talk about AirBNB-
| Ghosttown's ;)
|
| And i think it's a absolute nice adventure for a 17 y/o. Talk
| with lot's of different peoples, see lot's of places....genius
| i love it!
| ithkuil wrote:
| > he didn't pay for
|
| 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.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| Read the comment again - he pays for one seat, he sleeps
| across 3 or 4.
| ithkuil wrote:
| ah that's what you meant
|
| 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
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| If you're on a flight and there's a free space next to you,
| would you say you're wrong if you occupy it by stretching
| your legs?
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| sure. once you take off, you're not getting more people
| on until you land.
|
| by that logic, you have until the next stop, and then any
| claim you have to a seat is forfeit.
| _visgean wrote:
| if they are empty what is the deal? If somebody books the
| ticket he will be asked to move to his seat.
| landgenoot wrote:
| You are not paying for the seat, but for the journey.
|
| Go ahead and try to get a refund when you don't have a seat
| on a crowded train.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| 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."
|
| Translated from https://assets.static-
| bahn.de/dam/jcr:82c5f579-c786-41dc-abf... (Page 20, 6.1)
| truculent wrote:
| Is he really occupying more than one seat if there's
| nobody else there to take the remainder?
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| Literally yes he is. You can argue about whether this
| should be enforced, but by the text of the contract, it
| is not allowed.
| rusk wrote:
| Fair use IMHO IANAL
| 6510 wrote:
| You can use as many as you like until instructed not to.
| myk9001 wrote:
| Does a falling tree in a forest make a sound if there's
| no one around to hear it.
| hobofan wrote:
| Read the comment again
|
| > with the low occupancy of the train, this is not a
| problem whatsoever
| SergeAx wrote:
| He paid once for an unlimited journey ticket. He gets
| either a seat for a day ride or a couch for a night
| journey.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| 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.
| garciasn wrote:
| Only because, according to him, the attendants don't seem to
| mind the homeless teenager (and others) doing this, not
| because it's ok.
| immibis wrote:
| If nobody minds, then in what sense is it not okay? If the
| space is needed for luggage, I'm sure he will be asked to
| move.
| vkou wrote:
| > If nobody minds, then in what sense is it not okay?
|
| Nobody might mind a one-off antisocial behaviour, but if
| it becomes a pattern, or if everyone starts doing it,
| everyone might start minding it.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| _then_ it would not be ok. _then_ is an imaginary some-
| time /some-condition.
| interludead wrote:
| Programming make it happen for him. It's really cool
| mipsi wrote:
| After reading this, Snowpiercer doesn't feel that awkward
| anymore.
| ciconia wrote:
| > 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.
| Milner08 wrote:
| 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)
| martinald wrote:
| This is just totally incorrect. Total rail subsidy in the UK
| is PS11bn/yr. Ticket sales are another ~PS8bn/yr Total TOC
| profits are PS100m/yr. Rolling stock operating companies take
| maybe PS200m/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.
| badcppdev wrote:
| 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.
| notahacker wrote:
| When I saw "I spend PS8500 a year to live on a train" I
| assumed it was someone moaning about a 2hr commute to
| London...
| pacifika wrote:
| Just a story device to contrast a positive experience
| gnfargbl wrote:
| 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.
| tdullien wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.amazon.de/MC-Rene-Alles-Karte-sehen/dp/349962969...
| koevet wrote:
| 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.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| 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.
| 15457345234 wrote:
| > 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| What type of work requires to be connected to the internet
| all the time? If anything it's one source of distractions
| less.
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Coding works okay. Git works offline, and for the occasional
| pull/push even a slow connection is good enough
| walteweiss wrote:
| 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.
| propter_hoc wrote:
| I don't understand. What does he eat? Does the first class ticket
| include meals?
| ncr100 wrote:
| And what about washing his clothing? What about doctors?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| It's all in the article:
|
| "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).
| ncr100 wrote:
| Thank you for the reference @flohofwoe - I overlooked this!
|
| Sounds fantastic.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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).
| jamil7 wrote:
| 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.
| jplrssn wrote:
| Especially seeing as the steady state of DB operations these
| days seems to be utter chaos.
|
| But it does seem like a good way to explore the country.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| He's not in an ICE 24/7 though, if you read the article he goes
| hiking in the alps or to the beach. The train is for sleeping.
| jorisboris wrote:
| 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
| _visgean wrote:
| why Switzerland? I would think its a bit too small for this
| kind of travel.
| junar wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2357.html
|
| [2] https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2356.html
| TimCTRL wrote:
| metro - no pun intended :)
| charlieKilo wrote:
| What about his carbon footprint? Is it responsible to travel
| hundred thousands of miles without an actual reason to travel?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| 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.
| _visgean wrote:
| > 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.
| dghughes wrote:
| >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.
| yungporko wrote:
| 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.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| 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.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| 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).
| Neil44 wrote:
| >Even the unsurprisingly much more efficient German rail system.
|
| I hate this fetishization of anything European as if it's the
| land of milk and honey. If you live in Haiti OK, but I'm guessing
| the authour doesn't.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/14/its-the-sam...
| eythian wrote:
| 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.
| alismayilov wrote:
| 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.
| treme wrote:
| Adventure is priceless
| gongdzhauh wrote:
| 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.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| He would have to spend his time studying instead of working
| though, or else get kicked out
| tiborsaas wrote:
| Yeah, but for a little extra, the scenery of your window keeps
| changing every minute, every hour, every day compared to a
| fixed room :)
| landgenoot wrote:
| Reminds me of the ads on the city buses in Berlin
|
| > 60m^2, keine Kuche, kein Bad - Fur 60,66 EUR warm im Monat.
|
| EN: 60 square meters, no kitchen, no bathroom - for just 60.66
| EUR per month, utilities included.
|
| https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/20182186004296102...
| madcaptenor wrote:
| too many roommates, though.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| ...do you use the steam screenshot sharing function as an image
| host?
| landgenoot wrote:
| No. It was the first result on Google image search. However,
| after taking a closer look, I think it is some in-game
| screenshot of a bus simulator.
| Arrath wrote:
| I'm glad I wasn't the only one perplexed by that.
| mateo1 wrote:
| 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.
| sotix wrote:
| 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.
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| The potential for psychological fatigue is huge!
| OwlsParlay wrote:
| The sad fact is that this is more expensive than my 1-bed flat
| was 15 years ago. Rent really is insane if this is preferable
| now.
| voisin wrote:
| 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.
| Scarblac wrote:
| 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.
|
| But sleeping there is a bit too much.
| unixhero wrote:
| Super shitty intro on this article. I had to say it
| penjelly wrote:
| > i sleep while I race along the tracks towards my destination. I
| don't have a place to retreat to.
|
| many people pay specifically for place to retreat to
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't this a completely illegal way to live due to the
| registration requirement that requires every person living in
| Germany to have a fixed address?
| flohofwoe wrote:
| He's probably registered at his parent's address. But really,
| nobody will give a fig about where he's registered vs where he
| actually lives.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| > 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
| ncr100 wrote:
| 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...
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Very cool, I thing in North America this would be impossible or
| at least very uncomfortable.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| 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?
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I do not believe.
|
| 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| 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.
| mudita wrote:
| 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.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| 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.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| There are services/agents that act as your address. Not
| everyone chooses to do this but what you describe is
| solvable.
| mike_hock wrote:
| 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.
| lakpan wrote:
| 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.
| notahacker wrote:
| This was also the solution I used when I spent 3 years
| travelling the UK in a boat. And for that matter when I was
| living in London in shared flats...
| grecy wrote:
| 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.
| probablynish wrote:
| > 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)
| grecy wrote:
| Sorry, typo. I was working towards citizenship and wanted
| to keep my PR.
| probablynish wrote:
| Ah, I see - same question though, I'm curious which
| citizenship you eventually acquired without stepping foot
| in the country?
|
| BTW I spent the last 15 mins enjoying your blog,
| particularly the entries on Tanzania (I grew up there).
| Glad you enjoyed your time there :)
| mike_hock wrote:
| The wording of his comments strongly suggests he doesn't
| want to share that information.
| probablynish wrote:
| Oops. Didn't mean to push so strongly then. Sorry grecy!
| jpalawaga wrote:
| does passport necessitate mailing address?
|
| 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.
| nicolas_t wrote:
| > You know how it is with trains. Even the unsurprisingly much
| more efficient German rail system.
|
| Efficient and German Rail systems are not words that go together.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/germany-november-train-punctuality-wor...
| moooo99 wrote:
| 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?
| tetris11 wrote:
| I'm surprised this is coming from the Metro. Trains in England
| are _bad_ , but trains in Germany are _the worst_.
|
| The only thing that works in Germany are the busses, and even
| then, some of them you have to call an hour before first...
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| 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.
| mcluck wrote:
| 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
| calmoo wrote:
| It's not an opinion anymore, it's fact. A huge percentage
| of trains are late in Germany because of crumbling
| infrastructure here.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| It's not that bad, but if you have Switzerland south of
| you, every single of your trains look bad.
|
| (Take it with a bit of neighbourly humour.)
| albert180 wrote:
| 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.
| xutopia wrote:
| 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.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| 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?
| locallost wrote:
| 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.
| simonw wrote:
| 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.
| zakki wrote:
| You can use that money for:
|
| - rent a 2 storeys shop for a year 1/3 - start a small business -
| 1/3 - personal monthly expenses for a year - 1/3
|
| in a medium town in Indonesia.
|
| Enjoy the journey in bootstrapping your business.
| elif wrote:
| 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)
| mundays wrote:
| Overnight trains in Japan are all but extinct now. Only two
| remain (but really, one). It seems that the economics just
| don't add up.
| account-5 wrote:
| Not possible in the UK. In the UK every year the charge more for
| reduced services.
| mrandish wrote:
| 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.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Would have done tons of things like this if I didn't have
| student loans hanging over my head.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| 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.
| dangus wrote:
| This seems cheaper than rent so I don't know what student
| loans has to do with it.
| callalex wrote:
| Stable employment generally requires a stable location,
| stable schedule, and a mailing address.
| ushakov wrote:
| No worries, this guy is in debt like you!
| "Schlussendlich schaffte ich es nur mit einem Kredit von
| meinem Onkel, die 5.888EUR fur die BahnCard aufzubringen"
| "I only managed to raise EUR5,888 for the BahnCard with a
| loan from my uncle"
|
| source: https://leben-im-zug.de/mein-jahresrueckblick-2023/
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| 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.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| 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.
| forinti wrote:
| I don't really know what his parents were afraid of, they are in
| Germany. Maybe they might have to drive somewhere to pick him up.
| lenkite wrote:
| 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!
|
| Saw so many places without the stress of driving.
| Smar wrote:
| Here in Finland, I've only ever purchased tickets from the
| machines on stations. I suppose they are not used in most
| countries?
| josefresco wrote:
| "takes showers in public swimming pools"
|
| I hope this doesn't mean he was actually bathing _in the pool_
| but rather using the shower facilities at public pools.
| Razengan wrote:
| 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.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Sounds like the Venice-Simplon Orient Express
| porkbeer wrote:
| This is heartbreaking that his best option is to live like a
| vagrant.
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