I remember the good old day when you could just walk up and buy a paper ticket, and that was all you needed to board the plane. They'd ask for your name, but you could give them any name, they didn't care. I realize that we're a long way from that world now, and we could never go back to it, but it sure was nice.
That's how train tickets still work in Europe, I was kinda surprised and impressed. They don't check IDs at all, you just show a QR code.
In Russia where I'm from you need to show an ID to buy a long-distance train ticket and then again when you board the train. I was told that scalping was rampant before this was introduced which is totally believable. Which begs the question, how do European railway operators prevent it without requiring IDs?
I personally witnessed in Deutsche Bahn that passenger ticket was invalidated because he failed to show physical payment card he used to purchase the ticket online. That's why I started to buy physical tickets at the counter which is another kind of horror story.
Interesting. The only time I traveled on a Deutsche Bahn train, it was delayed 20 minutes, and they scanned my ticket off my laptop screen while I was already on the train, without saying a word :D
