I spend £8,500 a year to live on a train • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by simonw » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:08 PM UTC

xutopia wrote: post #332

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.

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.

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

#352

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

mudita wrote: post #340

sandworm101 wrote: post #317

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.

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…

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.

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

#353

Post by kragen » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

moooo99 wrote: post #331

kragen wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a colo will host your nas in a virtual machine for €5 a month or in a physical machine for €30 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 €150 a month

They put his yearly cost at ~9900€ which comes out to ~830€/mo. So 300€/mo cheaper would come out at around 530€/mo. At that price you could get a studio apartment in many cities or at least afford to live with 1-2 roommates.

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 €830/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

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

#354

Post by riknox » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:16 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #292

willyt wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not far off the same cost as to get to Glasgow from London, looking for tomorrow it's between £55 and £70. 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.

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

#355

Post by seba_dos1 » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:17 PM UTC

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

You can get a one-time train ticket from Dublin to a cheaper place for a fraction of that.

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

#356

Post by KptMarchewa » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:18 PM UTC

locallost wrote: post #326

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…

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 the…

>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.

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

#357

Post by zakki » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:22 PM UTC

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.

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

#358

Post by elif » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

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)

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

#359

Post by gnfargbl » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

ciconia wrote: post #133

> 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.

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.

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

#360

Post by 1123581321 » Tue, Mar 05, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #352

mudita wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

There are services/agents that act as your address. Not everyone chooses to do this but what you describe is solvable.