If I was his age a $2.5K on a years interrail ticket for unlimited travel across Europe (admittedly 2nd class and there may seat reservation charges) would be very tempting
When I was interrailing I'd try and do some across Europe night trains as it meant I saved on hostel costs and I'd wake up somewhere new. The choices are somewhat limited though
We did that a lot as well. Night trains are the closest mankind has to teleportation. Hop on a train in Berlin, have a beer, sleep, wake up in the centre Paris or Rome with a coffee and a croissant.
The closest we have to teleportation is airplanes (i.e. shortest travel time). Sleeper trains are more like cryostasis ships. The journey takes forever, but you don't notice.
On October he did began to incorporate the Global Pass (3 months) which got him as far as Istanbul and Ankara and high up north as Kiruna in Sweden, Lapland.[0]
Seems a very cautious guy, as he was booking a night train from Budapest to Bucharest, apparently he was warned at the counter by an employee which made him very uneasy. Reminds of the story of that TEDx talk.[1]
He is clearly enjoying it so I hope the positive experiences encourage him to even go beyond Europe, like to India ;) [2]
His northenmost point seems to have been Narvik (across the border in Norway). From what I can tell, that’s almost 70km (more than 40 miles) north of Kiruna.
You’d be amazed what you can normalize, and how quickly, when you just start doing something, or living in a certain way.
I’ve lived in various different situations that seem in retrospect intolerable, but at the time were perfectly ok - for instance, in the early days of bootstrapping, I didn’t bother with a bed or a home, I just slept on the floor by my desk at the office, using my jacket as a pillow. It became normal frighteningly quickly - to the extent that when I moved into my own place a few years later, I needed cajoling to buy a mattress at the very least - things had just ceased to have a hold on me, and a bed honestly seemed like an extravagance, unnecessary, just something I’d have to move again at some point down the road.
I don’t live such a Spartan extreme now, by any stretch of the imagination - but some traces of that experience linger - but either way my point was that that became very normal for me in a matter of weeks or months. Coming back to a more normal way of life was a strange sensation.
Honestly, I can understand how homelessness works.
https://www.eurail.com/en