The price of freedom is EUR 9 a month

The lovely German government has come up with a scheme to encourage people to leave the car at home and use public transport more: a ticket that costs EUR 9 a month and allows you to travel across Germany on regional transport. Just so long as you don't use InterCity trains or InterCity Express trains, then you can travel on buses, trams, underground trains and normal trains for as long as you like and as far as you like in the months of June, July and August - for EUR 9 a month.

Yesterday, therefore, I decided to go to the Middle Age market and "Ritterspiele" (jousts) at Schloss Burg, a rebuilt castle originally constructed in the 13th century. Just going there and back would have cost me just over EUR 12. 

A EUR 10 ticket got me into the castle and then, as the courtyard looked like a building site as maintenance work on the castle's structure was being done, I had to trudge a while through woodland and up a hill to get to the site of where all the mediaeval market stuff was. 

Unfortunately, not long after my arrival at the castle, the heavens opened and kept raining until I was on my way home. When I got to the field, it was a muddy area of the red grit you get on tennis courts. Lots of little puddles everywhere. Everything damp and dismal and very disappointing. I did get a carnelian pendant and a lump of amethyst crystals, so the journey was not all in vain.

Anyway, I made my way down the steep hillside and got the bus back to Wuppertal-Vohwinkel station and then got onto the S28 train towards D'dorf. 

The S28 runs between Wuppertal and Kaarster See, right on the other side of Neuss, to the west of the Rhine. I've always wanted to go that far and now, thanks to this new ticket, I had the chance. As did the woman who sat next to me on the train. It turns out that she was travelling here and there, making the most of the new cheap monthly ticket, so we travelled to the end of the line and then took the same train back two minutes later. 

I think we won't be the only two people in Germany just taking rides at random, especially not when you consider that by the end of May, a day before the first month's cheap ticket was valid, 7 million Germans had already bought it. Including me.