301–310 of 526 posts
I don't understand. What does he eat? Does the first class ticket include meals?
I don't understand. What does he eat? Does the first class ticket include meals?
And what about washing his clothing? What about doctors?
"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).
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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…
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.
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Indeed, Bath to Oldfield Park was (is?) the most expensive train journey on a per-mile basis possible in the UK.
I always thought it was Covent Garden to Leicester Square on the underground. It's about 250 metres.
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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 c…
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Because the government decided to stop subsidising the railways. Everywhere you see very cheap train fares it's because they are subsidised.
> 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.
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 m…
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).
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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…