Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast coming to you from a well-known branch of coffee mergers.

Just waiting for my decaf skinny latte, of course. But there we are. I want to talk to you today about trains in Germany because there is Wunderbar news.

The amazing Eat All You Can buffet of travel is back.

The German ticket that allows you for an entire calendar month to travel far and wide on all trains from regional expresses downwards

so not the intercity or ICE trains which are very good but very expensive it enables you to go

wherever you wish within the calendar month for a grand total.

Well, in the summer it was nine euros.

You might recall I was there at about midnight on the first day, on the first of June for this.

It's gone up 5.4 times and it's now an annoying, some say, 49 euros.

But look, let's keep this in perspective.

The biggest country in Western Europe, sorry, I haven't actually checked against Spain,

but, you know, I mean a very large country for 31 days maximum you can travel

anywhere you want to by train by tram by bus by ferry in the hamburg area and even on the

fabulous dangling tram of vuppertal, the Schwebebann.

So it is extremely good value.

The German embassy in London, who were the people who first told me about it,

say this is being done to help with the cost of living crisis in Germany

and also to reduce CO2 emissions.

And from all points of view, I think it is a terrific initiative.

And I will certainly be taking advantage of it, well, probably quite a lot next year.

It ended on 31st of August.

There's been lots of discussion.

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