Not just a year. Feb 22, 2023 - Aug 05, 2024
Since 2022, I finally felt somewhat safe in the place I was at after "spontaneously moving out of my mom's place". For the first time in my life, I was no longer tied to my mother's "worries" and didn't have to endure any more psychological horror from the horrible environment there. In other words: I was free.
To be precise, I moved to my grandma. Not only is she a much more pleasant person to be around, she also allows for much more freedom. I could go outside for a day and walk somewhere without her worrying about something unreasonably awful happening, which is exactly how I started my travels shortly after moving here in late 2021.
Then, the 9 euro ticket happened. In case you've never heard of it, during the three month summer period from June to August 2022, the German government introduced a temporary monthly ticket valid in all regional transit across the entire country for just 9 euros, making transit affordable to nearly everybody. This was a huge opportunity for people who usually don't bother taking transit (or worse - normally can't afford it) to finally get out and see places for cheap. For me specifically, this meant I was no longer tied to my parents' car and could easily reach places that were further away than walking distance.
This was eye-opening: I usually avoided taking any tram or S-Bahn because I couldn't be bothered to pay ludicrous prices for regular tickets or didn't want to risk riding without a ticket at all (even though my statistics say there's a 99.5% chance of that ending up fine in my city). Suddenly I had no excuse! I went to a bunch of places, including the nearby Leipzig, Dresden, and Berlin. Together with a friend we even went to Sylt, because of course we did. Slept in some covered field (likely private property) next to a road in Kampen. That was fun!
After the death of the 9 euro ticket, I felt comfortable paying for long-distance ICE tickets or getting a "Länderticket" for a day to go out and explore more. Eventually, this went a bit too far, though...
I got a discounted 3-month BahnCard 25, which made my long-distance travel a little cheaper, as I was traveling to Berlin fairly regularly at the time to visit a good friend. This card paid for itself in no time!
Out of sheer boredom, I went to the Deutsche Bahn website to see what other BahnCards were available and found something absolutely ridiculous: a BahnCard 100, which gives you unlimited travel on high-speed trains, for the horrendous price of over €4000? Who can afford something like that? And why not just buy a car?
There was a cheaper option though: a trial BahnCard 100, valid for just 3 months instead of 12, for about a quarter of the price. I could just about afford that if I really wanted to. Let's give it a try!
From February until May of 2022, I now had the unbelievable freedom of going anywhere in Germany at no additional cost using any train I wanted! This goes much further than the old 9 euro ticket, as my new ticket included all long-distance and high-speed services.
I went to all sorts of places, from the remote Katzhütte in Thüringen to some for me entirely new federal states such as... Bayern, and Baden-Württemberg, and Hessen, and ... yeah, I really didn't see much of anything up until this point. Other than the Ruhrgebiet, where I only briefly visited Köln, I saw pretty much every major city in Germany and even went to some neighbouring countries, too: Luxembourg has free transit so that was an obvious choice, but also Strasbourg in France was cheap and trivially easy to reach by ICE or funny-looking TGV train. Another free and easy to reach city was Salzburg in Austria. The 3 months really flew by!
My trial BahnCard 100 was over now at this point, but luckily there's finally a replacement for the legendary 9-euro ticket called the Deutschlandticket, this time in the form of a 49 euro subscription. That's exactly what I got and it ensured that I could still get anywhere, but in much less comfort and likely a lot slower. During this time I met a wonderful new friend in a regional train to Dresden, who recognised me by the shirt I was wearing!
Naturally I now was a lot more interested in trains, too. Knowing the ins and outs of all the different vehicles, being fascinated by the technology, and combining my other ludicrously expensive hobby of photography in the form of some trainspotting. Since the 9-euro ticket I've been logging all my journeys on this profile public for others to see.
Though I was missing something... regional trains were really getting on my nerves. Doing long-distance trips such as those I regularly did to Berlin using only S and RE-class trains was a draining experience. And while I could theoretically still reach all places in Germany, it was in no way comprarable to the freedom the BahnCard 100 had provided. What is that? They're offering what?
Yup, I got another one. This time for real, the full 12 months. Deutsche Bahn were (and still are!) offering the BahnCard 100 for a significantly reduced price of 2988€ for people under 28 years old. By literally cleaning my bank account of every single penny and being privileged enough to have a wealthy and incredibly nice grandma, I somehow managed to get one. The feeling was indescribable. Not once in my life have I ever spent this much money on a single thing and just the sight of a four-figure sum was something (almost) completely new.
I contined to do the same things I always did with the prior card, seeing new places, revisiting old ones, meeting friends, meeting even more friends, making some new ones thanks to the aforementioned account on Träwelling, and filling up my railway map.
The travels continued right up until August. It was a dream, having barely any responsibilities and only being in the hospital for a bad accident once and only losing the best friend once or twice. At least there were trains. Lots of them.
But as always, great things have to come to an end. Because I just can't find a job with my horrible graduation and companies instantly reject my offers, I have to go back to what could personally be the most traumatizing environment and try again. To be precise I will be trying to attend a Berufsfachschule (idk the English equivalent, "vocational school"?) for a year. This means that instead of being on the go 24/7 and enjoying life to the fullest, I'll have to slog through shit that doesn't interest me nearly enough for my brain to learn it properly, be the bullied one again, and throw myself into a social environment that even the school principal warned me about. I'm no longer seeing friends all the time (although I've already lost the most important friend anyway...). I'm being robbed of everything that literally saved me from suicide, everything that made me feel like I had a purpose in life.
Well, not quite. At least I still live with my grandma. If I had to stay at my mother's place, I wouldn't be typing out this text. To be honest I wouldn't even be breathing anymore.