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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

#311

Post by lotsofpulp »

petercooper wrote: post #161
pera wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood why trains are so expensive in England: when I lived in Bristol I liked to spend time in Bath, it's just a ~10 minutes ride but it costed 10 pounds each way if I remember correctly... but at least you could bring your bike for free :p

Public transport in the UK is trapped in a vicious cycle. The system is poor, so people buy cars, which means fewer people use the system, which means less investment, which means the system gets even worse, so more people buy cars. Despite all its ills, driving is, for enough people, a more pleasant experience than tackling strikes, standing on a train for two hours, or being unable to travel at certain times at all…

> 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.

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

#312

Post by walthamstow »

jen20 wrote: post #305
walthamstow wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was Covent Garden to Leicester Square on the underground. It's about 250 metres.

Yes, seems that my info there is well out of date (though when I last lived in the UK, the underground is on a different fare regime).

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.

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

#313

Post by moooo99 »

flohofwoe wrote: post #273
me_me_me wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> 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.

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

#315

Post by chippiewill »

flohofwoe wrote: post #255
JonChesterfield wrote: post #84

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…

> 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…

> 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.

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

#316

Post by WesolyKubeczek »

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?

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

#317

Post by sandworm101 »

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.

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

#318

Post by theBobBob »

mandmandam wrote: post #297
me_me_me wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That is for renting a whole property. You will have to share with someone for €600 per month. Try the "Sharing" option in Daft for that.

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

#319

Post by johnwalkr »

iraqmtpizza wrote: post #304
ethbr1 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it's subsidized by taxes on French people and runs at a loss

That's true of most transit and also true for roads.

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

#320

Post by moooo99 »

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…

> 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

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