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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

#481

Post by fastball »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #479
fastball wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cloud services are precisely the kind of thing that enable being a digital nomad. Having a permanent home so that you can keep your own NAS is almost the exact opposite of that.

You don't need a permanent home to own a NAS. Rent co-location space, rent a closet from a friend, rent space in your parent's house. You don't exactly need a livable amount of space to store a NAS. It's no different than paying to use the servers your shit is stored on in some cloud service.

That's true, but that is not what the person I was responding to said, so...

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

#483

Post by nicolas_t »

mcluck wrote: post #423
tetris11 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

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

I've had terrible experience with intercities train with delays that were more than 25% of the length of the trip. Once I was waiting for a train that was an hour late. The next train on the same line even arrived before the train I was waiting.

I've traveled in a lot of countries and used train in a lot of them, none of them have been quite as bad as DB when it comes to reliability.

And the recent articles that claim only around 60% of trains arrive on time bears that.

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

#485

Post by herewulf »

voisin wrote: post #214

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.

Be that as it may, in comparison to Germany, the distance between those two places is absurdly far, and the population density in between is absurdly low. ;)

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

#486

Post by RamblingCTO »

moooo99 wrote: post #323
lillecarl wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ending up at "random" train stations at weird times with all your experience belongings

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

That's not guaranteed in Germany. Even places like Marburg have (had?) ICE connections passing through.

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

#487

Post by RamblingCTO »

flohofwoe wrote: post #257
curtisblaine wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Theft is though

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

#488

Post by RamblingCTO »

ant6n wrote: post #185
RamblingCTO wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Great addition, thanks! DB is so complex, I have no clue where subsidies are applied and where not. I just imagined they'd have some tax cuts or something

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

#489

Post by coolThingsFirst »

ben_w wrote: post #456
coolThingsFirst wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in Bulgaria 10K euros per year isn't going to get one a whole house + utilities + living expenses(food etc).

You're saying nearly half the workforce of Bulgaria doesn't have those things?

Entire house to themselves which they rent? They don’t.

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

#490

Post by lsajdn872he »

1123581321 wrote: post #360
sandworm101 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are there, in Europe? I'd love to hear more about that if you know of something. I'm living in a van (by choice) and I have had issues with getting a mailing address. Currently registered at a friends place, but won't last forever. The post forwarding service is also not reliable and does not forward all mail anyway.
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