ONE can't help but marvel in awe at the remarkable story of Leonie Muller, a young German woman who made international headlines this week after it was revealed she had ditched her Stuttgart flat for an unlimited rail travel pass and was living on board high-speed trains.
The 23-year-old student coined the idea after a dispute with her landlady. It made financial sense: her monthly rent was £290 while surfing Germany's rail network worked out at £250.
Ms Muller now spends her time travelling between university in Tubingen, her boyfriend's flat in Cologne and her mother's home in Berlin, clocking up between 750 and 1,250 miles each week.
All she totes is a change of clothes, a tablet computer and a washbag. The rest of her belongings are in storage.
Granted, Ms Muller rarely sleeps on board – preferring to sofa surf with friends and family – but she does write all of her essays using Deutsche Bahn's excellent WiFi, washes her hair in the train loos (the 35-minute stretch between Mannheim and Stuttgart allows time to luxuriate over her toilette) and revels in the diverse mix of people and places she encounters along the way.
What an adventure. I feel quite envious at her free-living, nomadic existence. Then my mind snaps back into focus when I think about travelling between Glasgow Queen Street and Edinburgh Waverley during rush hour. An experience described by one passenger in recent days as resembling "the last plane out of Saigon".
Seats are more elusive than Lord Lucan. Those who do manage to plonk their behinds down for the 50-minute journey – having paid a whisker shy of 25 quid for the privilege – are penned in like battery hens. It is like witnessing a Guinness World Record attempt to see how many people can squeeze into a telephone box.
Then there is the fraught business of getting washed in the toilets like Muller does. It is bad enough trying to do a quick wee without worrying that at any moment the fickle locking system (why does there have to be two buttons?) will fail leaving your smalls exposed to the entire carriage.
And don't get me started on the woeful provision of bike spaces. Book in advance (where's the spontaneity in that?), take pot luck (which doesn't exactly make for stress-free travel) and on many electric trains be scunnered by no dedicated cycle area at all (bikes can only be stored in the vestibule areas as long as you regularly check it is not blocking the way).
The jig is up. If other countries can run rail networks that feel like a home from home, why can't we?
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel