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12 December 2011

The €6 Train Ride Across Germany

After successfully traveling across the US for free, and having successfully hitchhiked three times, I prided myself on my ability to travel for dirt cheap. Frankly, for me it was not necessarily about the money (although saving so much money has saved me many worries), but the lifestyle: When you travel cheaply, you have to rely on other people to find your way forward, and that is the best way to travel.

In this vein, I had been searching for the best way to travel from Berlin to London. Then, through Couchsurfing, I found a girl who had a Eurostar ticket from Brussels to London that she wanted to sell for only €40, a great deal considering that I had paid over £150 for a round-trip Eurostar ticket from London to Paris. The ticket was for the 31st of August, so I had to be in Brussels by the 30th. I jumped at the chance to get the ticket. And suddenly, I had a goal, and a reason to get back on the road (or rails) as soon as possible.

I decided to give myself 3 days to get from Berlin to Brussels, enough to give me one last Saturday in the German capital. And it also gave me one more opportunity: The chance to get a train ticket across the country (to Cologne) for only €6. And yes, it was a perfectly legal, valid ticket!