In the end, it might end up being the Riesling from Kloster Eberbach. A bottle is available in the supermarket across the street for 8.99 euros – and thus costs about as much as the ticket with which you can travel all of Germany by bus and train from this Wednesday.
All in all, the search for services or products that cost exactly the same as the nine-euro ticket is not that easy. On the website of a large drugstore chain, for example, you will find exactly zero products at exactly this price.
Even at 8.89 to 8.99 it is disproportionately much less than with items that are available for around 9.99 or 4.49 euros. In the “Animal” category, for example, there is only one product on offer that costs about the same as the ticket price, namely the “Greendoor Coat Care Oil Organic Cocos Virgin cold-pressed” for EUR 8.89, which is certainly indispensable.
Since the big providers know what they are doing, the question of whether the pricing of the ticket was so clever in terms of consumer psychology can be answered with a clear “Hm, well”. If the monthly ticket had cost 9.99 euros, you would have earned ten percent more per ticket and probably not sold one ticket less. And the prize would have been one that, in addition to the purely social aspect, would also have been reminiscent of the market economy – because it occurs so often “on the market”.
Nevertheless, there is of course a lot that costs about nine euros, especially if you can also democratically cumulate and split.
For ten bags of house brand chocolate sprinkles, you would pay 8.90 euros at Edeka.
Or – also very important – you can get two bottles of Poliboy fireplace glass cleaner for a total of 8.98 euros. But you could also combine a pack of “Babyglück-Nappies, size 2, 42 pieces” (4.25 euros) with a six-pack of Krombacher Pils and then even have 25 cents left over (price question: how much is the six-pack?). Or, perhaps more sensible for some people: instead of diapers, you put five bags of “microwave popcorn without palm oil” in the shopping cart. If that’s too complicated for you, take the “Annual supply of washing machine care, 12 tabs” for 8.59 euros. Then you can enjoy it longer than three months of a ticket state of emergency.
There is also reading material at a high single-digit price, at Reclam, for example, collected stories by Achim von Arnim, who is closely associated with Berlin and Brandenburg, for exactly nine euros. The “joke book for children aged 8 and over” is a little more expensive. In any case, they have a bit of distraction in the crowded train.
Which brings us to grandma and grandpa. If they are not so enthusiastic about the nine-euro ticket because of the expected occupancy of the trains and buses, or simply no longer walk so well, you can perhaps make them happy with a bottle of “Klosterfrau Melissengeist 155 ml”. Cost 8.45 euros. The 500 gram “Fair Pound Coffee Crema” might also be an option, but it costs 49 cents more than the ticket for all tickets.
In the area of human beauty (we already had animal beauty), drugstores have “Essie Nail Polish No. 73 cute as a button” for 8.99 euros on offer, or Sante offers “Matte Lipstick 07 Kiss me Red”. But these aren’t exactly bargains. Maybe there would be three shares in the German solar car manufacturer Sono Motors, which were 10 times as expensive a few months ago? Or go out for a nice meal? More like: What to eat out… At the world’s most well-known and notorious fast food provider, many of the standard menus currently cost 9.29 euros.
Or you fill up with almost five liters of Super. Or get a normal train ticket in local transport. The route from Berlin Central Station to Rathenow, for example – after all, probably the only place in Germany that can call itself “Optikstadt” and where houseboats can also be rented – costs a flat nine euros.