The original request we received four weeks ago was: as soon as the 9-euro ticket is available, we should drive from southern Germany up north, from Berchtesgaden or Sonthofen to Flensburg.

A lot has happened since then.

The federal government's action, limited to three months, fired the imagination of the citizens like nothing from political Berlin for a long time.

There isn't a newspaper that hasn't asked at least one intern to look at the practical effects of the ticket or sent it on a trip to Germany on a regional train, including a live blog.

Timo Frasch

Political correspondent in Munich.

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However, the counter-movement set in immediately, especially on social media, which are known for their defeatism.

With biting irony, for example, a colleague wrote to the “Tageszeitung” on May 23: “I’m already looking forward to all the testimonials where journalists went everywhere for 9 euros a month.” The tweet was liked many times, including one esteemed colleagues from the department from which we received the suggestion for the text.

In fact, you can ask yourself what the added value of such field reports is.

Ever since Twitter has existed, everyone has known which journalist is stuck at which station or what the person sitting next to him is yelling into his mobile phone in the quiet zone.

But Twitter is not Germany.

Train travel, on the other hand, is more likely.

Most citizens should know what it's like to stand in a crowded commuter train.

Trying to keep your balance without grabbing one of the handles where the next smear infection is lurking.

Most people also know what it feels like to rush to a connecting train with luggage.

So should we give up the self-experiment and rather turn to subjects to which the normal citizen does not have easy access - such as the Bavarian State Chancellery?

No way!

Not only is the number of those who have actually never ridden a local train likely to be higher among FAZ readers than in the general population.

Rather, it is also a cheap excuse for phlegmatics, addicts and philosophers to make “the most exciting journeys in your own head”.

As a journalist of the year, chosen by Medium Magazin, recently said: "We have to get out more."

Journalism is judged by the reader by the result, but sometimes also by the circumstances, such as when someone reports from the front in Ukraine.

Such extreme experiences remain closed to a domestic correspondent, or better: spared them.

Nevertheless, it makes a difference whether you set off on a 9-euro research trip at ten o'clock in the morning or at five in the morning - like us!

Where are you going?

But the question was: where to start from?

Did it really have to be Berchtesgaden or Sonthofen, where we first had to drive from Munich and from where the trip north was estimated at almost twenty-four hours instead of a good fifteen and a half?

Behind this, the old journalist question shimmers, often asked by the accounting department: Do you have to go to a starred restaurant ten times to be able to write about fine gastronomy - or is five times enough?

We finally decide on Munich as the place of departure.

But what should the exact goal be?