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I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

metro.co.uk

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Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#291

Post by robertlagrant »

kkfx wrote: post #197
robertlagrant wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone who exists until he can produce for someone else, who effectively own him You're falsely equating ownership with exchange. He can do stuff for people, who can do stuff for him. He can choose who to do things for, and who does things for him. That's the opposite of slavery.

Allow me to depict a small game: living on trains means needing trains with nigh services, what you do if your train is canceled? You pay with a credit card, what to do if a train is canceled for bad weather and you have no working internet connection? You work on a giant platform what you do if a day that platform, who store essentially your digital life since you just have a laptop, decide to ban you for some reaso…

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.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#292

Post by cool_dude85 »

willyt wrote: post #231
mytailorisrich wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government decided to stop subsidising the railways. Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because they are subsidised.

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…

>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?

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#293

Post by flohofwoe »

koevet wrote: post #144

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.

Coding works okay. Git works offline, and for the occasional pull/push even a slow connection is good enough

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#294

Post by flohofwoe »

15457345234 wrote: post #223
koevet wrote: post #144

I wonder how does he actually work as a digital nomad. Internet on DB trains is massively unreliable, there are entire patches of country that are not covered by mobile signal.

> I wonder how does he actually work as a digital nomad. I suspect the secret here is that a lot of people adopting this type of lifestyle produce really mediocre output and some way or another fit into the gaps at a large company that doesn't conduct aggressive performance reviews. Everyone is different but I find it hard to believe that high quality code is generated from working consistently in that type of enviro…

What type of work requires to be connected to the internet all the time? If anything it's one source of distractions less.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#295

Post by flohofwoe »

pdpi wrote: post #287
flohofwoe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armed train robberies are not all that common in Germany though.

In his position, train robberies aren't the first problem that comes to mind. Just somebody stealing my backpack with all my earthly possessions.

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 ;)

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#296

Post by throwup238 »

rockyj wrote: post #286
flohofwoe wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 depressin…

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…

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.

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#297

Post by mandmandam »

me_me_me wrote: post #259
flohofwoe wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 1…

7714 per year is 600 per month €600/month In Dublin would get you a 1m2 closet and shit bucket

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...

Re: I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train

#300

Post by ncr100 »

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...

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