Germany is the one that flipped on me. Was all set to buy a 5 day pass for around 250 euros until a friend who lives in Berlin showed me the regional day tickets. Those Lander tickets run about 25 euros and cover up to 5 people on slow trains. Since I wasn't in a rush, I did Munich to Nuremberg to Bamberg for way less than any pass would've cost. The catch is they're not valid before 9am on weekdays and only on regional trains, so it only works if your schedule is flexible. Now I always check the regional deals first before even looking at passes.

That whole "custom tray" thing reminds me of when I bought a $200 fishing rod and still got out-fished by my buddy with a $20 setup from Walmart. Sometimes the fancy stuff just doesn't do what the cheap stuff does, weird how that works.

Kept one for almost four months back when I was going through a rough patch and had way too much time on my hands. Here's the thing nobody tells you: the notebook itself is the problem. Once you start writing stuff down you notice it more, and the noticing makes you write more, and pretty soon your brain is hunting for hits and quietly tossing out all the misses. I started marking two columns, one for the "whoa" stuff and one for the boring days where nothing lined up, and the boring column was way longer than I wanted to admit. The phone dying at the same spot is probably just your battery and your route being the same every day, and the friend texting when you think of them is the one that got me until I counted up all the times I thought of someone and they didn't text. Try tracking the near misses too for a week and see if the pattern still feels as heavy. It doesn't mean nothing real is going on, just that your brain is a pattern machine and it'll build one out of anything if you feed it a notebook.