But the idea that you go 55 minutes just because of policy; and skip 15 stations is crazy to me. Again with the assumptions that it can safely stop somewhere for 5m and I’m pretty sure the answer is yes.
I have fond memories of train stopping close to my house for various random reasons and I’d just get out so I don’t have to walk back from the station. The modern world where everything is “safety issue” and “someone else’s problem” is where we lost our ways, and it’s never coming back.
As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a regional train in France, and the crew swiftly adapted by bending rules to accommodate a difficult situation caused by bad weather. I'm not sure this could happen today, but it was a thing 10 years ago, we used to trust the operators back then.
When you get on the bus there's a big sign stating the rules of riding the bus which include strictly stopping at designated bus stops ONLY and threatening fines. For the rest of the day I watched every bus driver stop anywhere they like if a person hailed the bus, allowing people to get in while waiting in red traffic lights, and if you talked to the driver he'd drop you off anywhere you wanted as long it's possible. Those drivers make nothing from this so they are doing it because this is life and also because there's no real enforcement against it. Also you can get in through the exit doors and leave through the entry doors, whatever you like.
I decided I feel ok about this and don't want it to change
Fourth world: Parts of the developed world that have collapsed past third-world conditions because industrial safety nets have simultaneously withered from neglect/underfunding, and are being overwhelmed by demand, but where pre-modern societal structures don’t exist as backstops anymore.
This is what this story reminds me of.
I feel the same. It is easier to hide behind rules, regulations, bureaucracy etc. Not saying we should stop following rules, but using a bit of common sense and having a bit of compassion would go a long way.
I also remember reading about a train that Japanese railways kept running, just for one kid, she took the train to school. They kept it running until she finished school, just for her (I know, someone is going to point out the inefficiency, cost etc about this story, but that is a separate conversation). I suppose stories like these are going to become rarer and rarer as time goes by, as everything has to be "efficient" and everyone has to follow some "rules".
I'm from Bangladesh, and the attitude you're describing is one reason why the country is poor and a mess! Deviating from the schedule for the sake of a single person is completely insane and maddeningly inefficient. It's classic third-world mentality. In a good country, the system would never tolerate such deviations. In a really good country, someone wouldn't even ask for such accommodation for themselves, because it would be shameful to inconvenience others even slightly for one's own sake.
In many places without rigid rule enforcement, that kind of flexibility can actually feel more humane in practice, even if the overall system is worse. What frustrates me in the US (and sometimes in Europe) isn't rules themselves, but how aggressively and impersonally they're enforced in very ordinary situations.
For example, a friend of mine in New York casually crossed a line at a small PlayStation event and was stopped by a bodyguard as if he were bypassing airport immigration. I had a similar experience at a small event, maybe 300 people, where I tried to cross a line to get coffee and was abruptly blocked by security (they were just preparing the snacks).
Compared to more informal cultures, this kind of hyper enforcement can feel oddly hostile, especially when it's disconnected from any real safety concern.
"In a developing country nothing works but everything is possible. In a developed country everything works but nothing is possible"
In Lord of the Rings, fellowship of the ring when Gandalf arrives in Shire and Sam runs to meet him he says, "you're late!" to which Gandalf replies, "Deutsche Bahn is never late but arrives precisely when it means to".
This situation seems pretty unusual, even for the DB. A regional express train should have many more stops than that. It sounds a bit like they switched the train to a direct connection to the final stop because they switched to the other side of the rhine (so you can't make any of the other planned stops anyway).
The major mistake here was not making the stop in Troisdorf. At the point where they missed that they should have planned the earliest usable stop for the passengers that needed to leave there.
I would also assume that there is no safe way for the conductor to halt at any earlier stop. A safe halt would need to be planned at a higher level.
While Iran is not a third-world country per se, you'd be surprised how many times the bus driver would stop at random locations closer to passengers' destinations as well as bus stations.
There's more flexibility in day-to-day life of Iranians; people are expected to follow the rules but there's also this ancient concept of "morovvat" in the culture which encourages self-sacrifice for the betterment of others. Ask any tourist who's traveled to Iran and they tell you about the hospitality of Iranian people; e.g., you ask someone how to get to a place and they literally pause whatever they were doing and walk you to that place so you don't get lost!
It's strange how the image of Iran has been stained by the theocratic government (which Iranians protest against many times...).
If they weren't able to announce the train would stop at one station, why do you think they'll be able to do that at another?
I'm pretty sure train conductors aren't allowed to just stop somewhere unscheduled for good reasons, there's always a train behind and in front of them with no buffer.
Today, pulling the emergency break to get off in a field would quickly end you on surveillance videos and with a large fine for obstructing operations, possibly with a detour to the police station for a stern conversation.
I miss the “yeah, whatever” attitude.
I wonder if there's a country somewhere with the right balance.
The message out of 2020 and 2021, is that the big people know what they're doing and we don't.
I can neither confirm nor deny, I may have done it to get to/from the grocery store from near my house when I didn't have money for a car.
When every useful idiot is screeching about statistical optimization you lose any optimization for anything that isn't measured or isn't optimized for.
Like it's not hard to imagine the breathless comments on HN about how trains should never(TM) stop without a platform if they'd have stopped the train on both sides and some old lady tripped and fell and broke her nose on the rail.
It reminds me of letting a child that's too young to not be stupid pick it's own dinner and it picks of candy then to the surprise of nobody with a brain it's cranky later despite being calorically satisfied by the numbers.
>The modern world where everything is “safety issue” and “someone else’s problem” is where we lost our ways, and it’s never coming back.
It'll come back if there's something bad enough that happens to kick society back to a point where "lol we ain't got the spare resources for that shut up and go away" becomes an acceptable way to deal with the peddlers of these things. But anything that gets us that far won't be pretty.
Conductor radioed ahead and the train heading the other way stopped when we passed it and the passenger was transferred over.
They didn’t have to do that, but it was nice.
They’ve also hired a cab for a station miss that was their fault.
During the Great Financial Crisis astute observers pointed to the loss of local bankers for most transactions as a component of the multifaceted structural causes. When you have your mortgage through the bank down the street, you're much less likely to mail them the keys instead of paying your bill, especially if you have to see the banker in the grocery store etc.
What did we do about this? Of course we didn't learn anything - we actually further consolidated banking.
The same is true of train service, traffic etiquette, and political discourse. The tragedy of the commons is exacerbated by moving away from local community.
Where she started to go a little weird is she thought anyone who had an idea had the right to just go do that, and society can go hang (she grew up suffering the worst Sovietism could serve up, her concept of community was damaged as a result). Unfortunately, her ideas are now held close to the hearts of some of the most powerful people on Earth, who are also going a little weird.
I'm actually OK with experts deciding that a particular policy is the right way to keep people safe. What I'm not OK with is using the policy as a prop to avoid independent thought or agility. I'd rather that instead of a procedure or a policy, people were taught a way of thinking about the World.
"We're not allowed to stop at the next station because we're not registered to do so", is a statement made in deference to a policy regardless of whether it makes sense or not. "We need to spend a few minutes making sure we're registered at the next station before we go any further" complies with the policy, but is a person taking ownership of resolving the problem, and comes from a place of empathy for the passengers on board. We need more of the latter, but unfortunately the Randian version we're now getting is "We'll stop or carry on wherever the driver feels like because he is sat at the controls so there's nothing anybody can do about that".
In 3rd world countries it might be acceptable for people to jump out of 5-foot high carriages onto live tracks with trains running at 100mph for convenience, but not in Germany
In my experience, this doesn't always happen, and I say this as someone who traveled very often on that same RE5. The situation is what it is (poor maintenance, etc), but the main issue is that the tracks are shared with freight trains impossible to stop given their weight, so to avoid collisions and have a nice (albeit late) Christmas, they made that call to play it safe, rather than have a freight train crash into a train full of people.
I wouldn't blame it on the person, I would rather blame it on the shitty system the train driver has to rely on - apparently so unreliable they had to do what they did. Keep in mind, that's a delay also for that person who very likely doesn't want to work on that day either - the same person that has to deal with that level of BS every day now.
Of course, just to be clear, there is always the German ready to save the world by following an idiotic nonsense procedure, but that's everywhere in the world.
> I have fond memories of train stopping close to my house for various random reasons and I’d just get out so I don’t have to walk back from the station. The modern world where everything is “safety issue” and “someone else’s problem” is where we lost our ways, and it’s never coming back.
You got lucky many times. All it takes is that one time someone makes the wrong call and you get smashed by a train. In Europe this is very rarely the case, because exactly of these "nonsense" rules.
The main issue is the shitty maintenance/sync with other trains etc. "Digitalization".
Google Maps - No idea Citymapper - what? English announcement - nien.
Thanks to an old lady, who told me that i needed to switch coaches to go the airport. Madre mia!!
We were so lucky that we'd decided to go to the airport much earlier than we needed.
And don't get me started on the ticketing machines not accepting Visa, Mastercard, or Amex at the central station in Munchen. Or the web ticketing interface which was at least as annoying as the train to use.
If third party apps don't show that information that's on their part. Usually it's also said after departure inside the train by the conductor, though maybe just on long distance trains.
But I don't think DB is unique in this weirdness.
Back in the UK, I think something similar happens on routes going past Gatwick; I've only heard English announcements on that train despite the airport being one of the ones serving London.
Plus, one time I was on a work trip to Liverpool (via London), and somewhere around Nottingham or Crewe a fellow passenger asked me when we'd be getting to "Liverpool Street": https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Liverpool+Street+Station,+Lo...
There's also the way my first leg home from university was Aberystwyth to Birmingham New Street, but the train regularly terminated early (Shrewsbury? Or was it Wolverhampton?) to game the rules.
It was partially on me because there are assigned seats and carriages, but I was late and had to jump in the train. But still no vocal announcement of "cars x to y go to z, the others go to w".
It's not that complicated.
Train splitting is quite acceptable when the customer service is alright.
The preferred way to get to the airport is via S8 (not S1). Idk how one could push/guide people more to take this one. S8 does not split and it definitely has announcements in english. They also prioritize keeping S8 running above anything else.
I'd also recommend buying tickets via app, not via ticket machines.
This is the one benefit of living in an overly-litigious country that has news media which can pick up on a story like this. They’d rather have the masses suffer to avoid the legal fees and bad press, so instead of sacrificing a train, they’d make everyone’s lives worse overall.
I’m not arguing for utilitarianism, though. Ir allows dictators to thrive.
Also, I believe you were trying to write "nein". But why would you expect an English announcement in Germany on a German train? Google Maps? What does that have to do with that; it's an unofficial and only like an 80% solution.
Now, at least, the announcements are also in English, which frankly is very positive - that DB are improving anything noticeable. (And to be clear, Bavaria/Germany are absolutely not given to accommodating non-German speakers, like, ever.)
I agree that it's not that intuitive that a line can have multiple end stops (like Stuttgart - Munich ends in both Stuttgart and Munich, depending on the direction you are entering?
That is indicated on the platform screens before getting on the train. It tells you which part of the train goes where so you know which wagon to take.
I found it also not very intuitive first time I took it. But hey, when travelling there’s always local peculiarities to take care of ;)
It's also funny considering how here in South America we look at Germany trains (and Switzerland trains) as always on time, and the best train system, etc. But I am sure if this happens here it would be on the cover of newspapers.
That's very outdated, DB has been terrible for a long time though. Switzerland is still the best though. Here are some stats for 2025:
https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped
Since you have to scroll down quite a bit to get the list of most reliable European trains (with percentage on time):
1. Switzerland 97.8%
2. The Netherlands 93.9%
3. Belgium 88.6%
4. Austria 82.2%
5. France 79.7%
6. Italy 62.0%
7. Germany 58.5%
(Not sure why these are the only countries in the list.)
When taking an international train from Germany to Switzerland, don't count on it that it will run through to the final destination.
SBB (Swiss National Railways) started to block German trains if their delay is more than 15 minutes (so, basically every DB train) and won't allow the train on their network.
This is only peripherically educational. Constantly delayed DB trains completely fouled up the scheduling on the extremely dense Swiss network. So they just won't allow it anymore.
On a sidenote: In 2024 SBB trains were 93.2% punctual. Connectivity punctuality (where you have to catch a connecting train) was 98.7%. A train is counted as punctual if the delay is less than 3 minutes (half the German figure).
I could make out a bit of what the driver said, but not enough to be sure of the detail, which is what really mattered. I expected to miss my flight, but just made it in the end.
It's true of Switzerland and probably Austria. Germany is famous for having infrastructure issues that will take some time to resolve.
Eg see https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped for some stats
How much help does your home country give to German tourists who don't speak English?
If it's anything like the UK, the staff have incredibly secure jobs and recently secured some good changes to their working conditions/pay. It's probably not in their contract to announce in other languages, so they do exactly what their contract says
Other commenters have already set the record straight, pointing out that these are clearly not in the same cluster.
See also https://www.thelocal.de/20250430/switzerland-suspends-deutsc...
Pay-walled, but the title says it all: "Switzerland suspends Deutsche Bahn trains due to chronic delays". DB is so unreliable that it impacts the networks of neighboring countries.
In the end of the 90s with neoliberalism being very popular, it was decided to privatize the trains. The effect was only minimal investments in the infrastructure and a gradual rotting away of the train network. Now we a reaping what we have sown.
The enshitification of the German trains was done on purpose so they don't compete with cars.
I've been told that the UK is worse, but I don't have much experience with it outside of Eurostar.
I've had the last train out of central London for the night cancelled at about 1am and you can just message the train company on social media and they'll pay £100+ to get you a taxi all the way to somewhere like Cambridge.
Also, not sure how it is in other countries, but in the UK, everything is entirely open data. You can go to a site like https://map.signalbox.io/ to see a live map of every train in the UK, and sites like Realtime Trains let you get all the details about every train (eg. https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/simple/gb-nr:KGX)
On the plus side: local journeys are great. Delay Repay means you get up to 100% of your ticket back if you're delayed. If you cannot make the last train due to delays, they're obligated to get your home by bus or even by taxi. Train stock is (in my area at least) new and very comfortable. Views are good!
Ticket prices vary a lot and are unpredictable. I have not a last minute ticket from London to the midlands for just over £20, but they can be a lot more (several times as much?) for the same journey even booking ahead.
I definitely prefer the train to driving if I am going long distance by myself, but if its multiple people the car becomes a lot cheaper.
Local services in cities are pretty good. I never owned a car in London, nor in Manchester until I had a child.
Long range trains from, say, London to Manchester are often overcrowded and ridiculously priced.
I bet that UK trains "win" by being far more expensive than German trains, along with absurdly complex pricing. If you choose the wrong ticket you could also "win" a criminal conviction!
Don't worry though! We're currently building the most expensive bit of high speed rail in Europe, that won't even go into the centre of our capital city [edit: apparently it will now, see reply], or further north than the Midlands. Passengers who have the audacity to want to travel further north will have to transit over to the old tracks, creating even further capacity problems.
All of this is entirely avoidable, if the government just took a few common sense measures, but sadly it doesn't seem to be anyone's priority.
I'm on the other side of this. I end up chaperoning lost tourists on my DB disaster trips with a regularity that I should be getting a paycheck from DB.
Oh c’mon have you tried trains in Slovenia? The ICE from Budapest with a constant 230+ min delay, the regional one from Ljubljana to Celje where half the track is seemingly under perpetual construction (so transfer to a bus!), passenger trains delayed all the time waiting for freight trains, trains randomly going 20kph on some segments, and lately even vandals sabotaging the tracks. And don’t worry, they announce all of that exclusively in Slovene with no extra answers.
I’ve been on DB and it wasn’t that bad. It was expensive but at least the train didn’t max out at 80kph.
This is one of those issues I keep mulling about; it seems train operators (and airliners for that matter) tend to avoid being technically specific about operation problems, and just say "problems" and - if they are kind - where the problem is. And I cannot decide whether this is the wrong or right approach: how much information is too much? The argument is that travellers don't care why the train cannot move or why it is delayed, they just want to know when the next train is.
The problem - however - is that train operators come off looking like idiots, when they really aren't. As an example, the S-trains around Copenhagen have recently switched to a CBTC signal system, which has increased punctuality to 97% (below 3 minutes, cancelled trains counted). At cold temperatures, railway points (or switches, if you will) might become inoperable, as their mechanism freeze (of course, there are systems to prevent this, but can occur anyway). This happened this November on the S-train lines, but the announcement was "signal failure"; which meant the train operator (DSB) (and the railway owner (Banedanmark)) kind of looked a bit stupid, since the whole point of CBTC was to eliminate signal failures entirely (in fact, if you're being pedantic, since CBTC has _no_ signals, there technically cannot be any signal failures), and had promised as much.
But - then again - travellers really just wanted to know what the next train was, but I still think train operators are doing themselves a disservice by being oblique about the actual problem. Particularly when a problem lasts for several days, "technical problems" just makes people think their engineers are incompetent, when in reality they have no idea about the severity of the problem (because it is not communicated).
I may of course be biased here, since I have a high interest in how trains operate, but friends of mine - whose interest is far lessen compared to mine - are also frustrated by these opaque messages; and I think the reason is a strong sense of lack of control - since (assuming one made it to the station on time) up until this point, the passenger have done everything right, and yet the system failed, and now they are not privy as to why.
After the incident they will determine what's the least expensive lie they can plausibly give (perhaps the weather will change fast enough that you can blame the weather, perhaps you can't lie about an equipment failure when everyone in the airport sees you swap out the airplane). If they tell the passengers the truth at the time they risk being held to that later.
Deutsche Bahn does not think this is true and neither do I. If this was ever the thinking, they've performed or read studies and changed their mind
You can very clearly hear the drilled setup "<delay info> grund dafür ist <error category>" rigidly being regurgitated every. single. time. a delay is announced. The middle words are (per my understanding) a formal way to say "because of" and it's not something you will hear in daily life, so I presume it's the output of a committee and corporate requires them to say this, no matter if they know anything more than "the signal is red". Whether they know or not, the detail is always at a level that sounds like malicious compliance. I'd rather they say "we don't know" or say nothing at all. And if they do know, I'd hope they make up a new sentence like "someone was spotted on the crossing up ahead after the barriers closed. Someone is checking the cameras to make sure it won't come to a collision" but we instead get the robotic "we have come to a stop on the grounds of person on track". It mimics their training samples and what colleagues got into the habit of saying so I guess they think it's good like this, but is not actually helpful
Idk what creates this useless information culture, but they clearly know that passengers do want this information
To be honest, I don't care about excuses. Yes, problems happen, but this is systemic. Does it help me if I know the train tracks are broken yet again? It does not. The reasons (excuses) they bring up ring hollow. I don't feel that drivers or station staff would appear stupid if they don't tell. They are victims, too.
Just explain what's wrong. Arm passengers with the best info you can give them. And figure out a way to let people disembark close to where they need to be.
DB has become a complete joke. I've had to travel to and through Germany several times these past couple of years, and almost always there's a problem.
I once paid 80 euro for a taxi from Essen to Dusseldorf because they cancelled the train that would connect to the last ICE to Amsterdam. When I got to Dusseldorf on time, the ICE arrived at a different platform than announced. I only noticed that because some people were suddenly leaving the platform. I warned a few people who still hadn't noticed it. I bet a lot of people still managed to miss that train after all the trouble making it to Dusseldorf.
The main reason for this is lack of competition for DB in Germany. I used to date a guy who works at infra department in DB and based on what he told me, I couldn't believe how inefficient and massively complicated DB is. They have internal departments which acts as separate entities to mimic competition and each department has to place bids among each other to get contracts (more bureaucracy) but then they have an IT department and no matter how cheap or good outside IT providers are they must get the service from internal IT department (so much for competition).
At this point DB needs a complete overhaul and let go of so much dead weight to make it working again and unfortunately German politicians are just throwing more money at every problem hoping they would magically solve themselves rather than fixing the actual structural problems.
The privatisation and the crazy idea that it could somehow not being run on a deficit is what ruined it. Of course the competition thing is artificial, and the internal structures are kaput, but I doubt that more competition would fix it.
Surprisingly, 90% of the train personnel is still pretty good, acting friendly and professionally.
Cannot be - there is no competition in Switzerland, but things run pretty smoothly -> in the case of Germany I'd rather say: "lack of oversight, controls, 'konsequent zu sein'" -> in the case of Germany's DB I think that nobody at all levels gives a *hit about its problems.
I can't recall that this happened to me. The "lucky" scenario is when the connecting train is even more late so you can still catch it.
Ironically, Russian trains (even over distances of thousands of kilometres) are usually almost perfectly on time.
Germany's DB seems to fill the same niche as other companies there, like Telekom: semi-private companies living off old state-built infrastructure that they're now incapable of (or unwilling to?) maintain.
It is way more complicated than that, but you could commoditize the rail separate from the transport of goods and people, where they each compete on price for capacity, but it all gets extremely political very fast, i.e., public transport people vs goods transport that primarily pays for the whole network.
Same here, with a big German semiconductor player you all know. The IT department has to battle the non-it departments and external contractors for internal software dev jobs. It's a made up game, costing 70% of our work time (just the beurocracy).
And if you went to smoke with your bag and disappeared, well, they never saw it.
If you got in a taxi to take you 35km away and he drove you 60km away to a random other town instead, would you consider "kidnapped" to be over the top?
Does it only count as "kidnap" if you are not eventually released? Or is it just that it's not kidnap when a corporation does it?
Want to get to the airport 2 hours before your flight? Sorry, you have to plan in at least an extra hour, because there's a 40% chance your train will be severely delayed or canceled.
This unreliability drives people who need to get places on time to other modes of transportation. But if you don't mind being randomly delayed by an hour, the train is great. It's sad, and it didn't use to be this way.
> didn't have to worry about traffic, icy roads, or snow
Aren't these statements contradictory? I think "grow up" means problems are unavoidable and the adult thing to do is expect them and accept them, and then you say you didn't have to worry, as if problems never happen.
To me it sounds like you just got lucky on your Christmas trips. Two trips on time hardly prove a rule that there's never trouble, and in any case you directly state there's trouble sometimes and that's something to accept.
Now I don't know the stats on problem frequency, which of course matters. But that's different from "don't have to worry". Opposite really. "Here's how much you should worry".
In any neighboring country, where punctuality is at like 74-99%, depending on the country.
The DB is at 48.5% (Oct 2025) to 60% (2024 avg).
Swiss railway is seen as the ideal DB should strive for, but fact is that Switzerland invests more than double per capita into its rail infrastructure. German stinginess now compounded over decades, and that's not the fault of management.
Would you mind sharing some examples? My only complaints with DB are cancellations and delays. Well, the ticketing might be a bit confusing the first time you realize "ticket" and "seat reservation" are two completely independent entities. Similarly, rules for which train you're allowed to take might be a bit confusing. But I wouldn't call it scamming.
Blacklist everyone who was involved above a certain rank. Put together an entirely new structure. The only real way to get rid of this kind of rot is to make the consequences of dysfunction hit.
Only when I checked the passenger reservation list, I found this was train from yesterday, late by 23:50 hours.
(for the curious... No, I could not get my reserved birth and had to travel on unreserved ticket, but at least I reached destination on my planned time.)
I asked locals what is going on, turns out that all trains were late, and this train departed from the platform already marked for Bonn! “You should watch what train number you board on DB, not trust sign on platform!” locals helpfully advised me.
Back in NL I used to complain about trains being late...
Boy oh boy was I not ready for Germany and Deutsche Bahn. I heard stories, but it was so absurd at times that I treated them as comical acts.
Then I traveled long distance on DB...
- trains being late by 15-40 minutes is NORMAL. It's included. At this point I feel like it's even planned. - the "thrown out in the middle of nowhere" happens! Ruthlessly. Operationally. With zero empathy or guidance. One minute you traveled inside the train approaching your destination another minute you are on a station in some village, knowing nothing about "why?" And "what is next?"
I still take trains - but I do not plan any appointments on arrival. As arrival is theoretical and not guaranteed. I just take a gamble and sink hours into the journey. Read books. Watch movies.
P.s. I am surprised that DB is not held more accountable for the absolutely shit service they provide.
It is an area where proper governance is failing. I don't know about Germany, but in The Netherlands, Dutch law requires at least 90% of the trains to be on time (less than 5 minutes delay). If national train company do not reach those numbers, they are fined and I think in an extreme case they can lose their concession.
That's the famous German efficiency, not to waste time on things that were not done or caused by being inefficient in the first place. There's no point in wasting time on improving some process, fax machines still work, don't they?
Because the train mentioned in the article is not operated by Deutsche Bahn, but by National Express, see https://bahn.expert/details/RE28521/j/20251224-a0049123-9494...
National Express is actually a subsidiary of the British train operator Mobico Group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Express_Germany
Shifting the blame away from DB, who is responsible for creating the terrible track conditions and is responsible for the operations, to the train operator, who zero ability to influence what DB is doing is just totally unfair.
DB is at fault here, they lead the train onto the wrong tracks and they also caused the previous delays. Regional trains in Germany have many different kinds of operators. Taking any of them is always miserable in exactly the same way, which is in almost every case caused by DB, because they can not operate the train network.
What is worse is that these operators also get into conflict with the DB trains. E.g. they prioritize a DB train, which is already late, over a regional train, causing delays for regional trains.
It just raises so many questions in my mind that of all entities, a British train operator would be operating a train that is bounded within the German rail system.
My first thought is that it's some kind of counter-union effort through fake "competition" by bringing in foreign, private operators into the network.
You cannot add a stop if the rails are single track and the next train is just behind you.
If you do said train will be delayed, will not be able to switch tracks at its final destination ( since it has a hard slot for that) and errors cascade.
It’s the best possible train system, given how little was invested …
What people don’t write clickbaity blog posts about is how in general things work very well. I’m currently sitting on a train from Nuremberg to Berlin and it takes less than three hours, it’s on time, quiet and just a good experience. This trip used to take five hours but then the high speed rail track got completed and cut the time by two hours. Wonderful!
So probably they need to add more parallel tracks, unused most of the time.
If you don't want to pay extra, you have to book six months in advance and be familiar with the fare system. It's super frustrating. It's just a train ride. I don't want to have to plan and organize it like buying a new car at the best price or trading stocks. And in the end, you can't even count on arriving on schedule. If you're unlucky, you'll be stuck at the train station in some godforsaken village.
I prefer to travel by car. The travel costs can be easily calculated based on the price of gas and fuel consumption. The total maintenance costs for a car are transparent. You are much more flexible and autonomous when planning your trip. The probability of arriving more or less on schedule is almost 1. And if you do get stuck in traffic, at least you have a little private, quiet, warm, and dry space around you.
If it were reliable, inexpensive, and uncomplicated, I would still find it more sensible to travel by train. But that is far from being the case. Instead, DB manages to combine the disadvantages of administrative bureaucracy and market economy.
But one thing is clear: I won't be bothered, robbed or even stabbed in my own car, and I also won't arrive in a different village lest I drive there myself. I won't arrive three hours late either, or have to stay overnight in some shitty Hotel because they couldn't find a replacement train.
The German public transport, like many other things in Germany, is an absolute fever dream for a "developed country".
The train experience in Germany is as bad as it is because of lobbying by the car industry and corruption both in the government and train operators. Not enough investment over decades paired with the absurd idea that train fares need to cover operating costs. Nobody would ask this of road networks, it’s just infrastructure that a society pays for. In addition to that the Deutsche Bahn suffers from common inefficiencies of large corporations that are not mitigated in effective ways by its leadership.
Oh boy. There's something deeply human about the frustrations of state institutions and bureaucracy.
From the linked article:
> How are train cancellations and delays compensated when traveling with the Deutschland-Ticket?
> In the event of a delay of at least 60 minutes at the destination station due to a delay or train cancellation in local transport, you will receive €1.50 compensation per case.
> Amounts under €4 will not be paid out due to a legal de minimis threshold. However, you can accumulate multiple late payment claims.
https://www.bahn.de/faq/deutschlandticket-verspaetung-erstat...
If you bought a regular route ticket you get 25% and more than an hour delay, and 50% at more than two hours. Not sure how it is with other multi-use tickets.
This, combined with the certain delays CAN make traveling by train quite affordable… /s
https://www.bahn.de/service/informationen-buchung/fahrgastre...
They did occasionally announce the reasons for delays. Two that I remember: "Leaves on the track" in Autumn, what a surprise. "The wrong kind of snow" um...it's Winter, it snowed, it was nothing special?
On the train back, we were delayed by the train in front of us catching fire.
This is the fundamental mistake underpinning their train service since the long distance trains frequently have to wait for other trains to pass, cascading delays through the system.
That and an almost criminal level of underinvestment in the past 20 years or so.
German railways could be better, but at the same time it's nowhere near the level of complaining the average person makes, as in this article. I think it says more about the author than the company. "It's twenty minutes late, I consider this early". Despite the problems that exist, I wouldn't say I ever had the feeling of being relieved the train is only 20 minutes late. Especially not with local trains.
It's not "your train connection didn't work out", it's "you were planning to go somewhere, and the train took you somewhere else entirely, much farther away than when you started, and gave you no way out of this, and not even an apology or explanation". This is absolutely comparable to a form of kidnapping.
The connection in question is probably https://bahn.expert/details/RE28521/j/20251224-a0049123-9494....
According to this page, it actually did stop at Troisdorf (though, that doesn't have to be correct). I don't see why they should have been able to stop at Neuwied but not any of the stations in between. Most of them are possibly too small, as the RE5 is quite long for a regional train, about 200m. The usual "RE" on this track, the RE8, is only about 110m max. Bonn-Beuel should have worked, though.
The problem was a broken relay, no trains were able to run for a few hours through Bonn. The official statement said that the trains have stopped and were replaced by buses.
And of course there is some huge fine or even potentially jail time if you moo in protest and pull that nice red lever to avoid the Christmas present of this bureaucratic idiocy (after all, you have legs that are capable of crossing train tracks and eyes to do that safely)?
But back to my country (Poland), it's better here - some had problems with physically getting out on the right station, and when the conductor saw it she even encouraged us to pull this lever in those cases so we don't have to get out at the wrong station.
I've been bundled into taxis by the train operator in Norway because it was expected, but also likely cheaper for them to ensure full taxis than have people arrange it themselves and end up with everyone able to demand the maximum refund.
The costs are low enough that it's not a problem if it happens occasionally, but does create some real pressure to actually fix issues if it happens often enough.
I have also been left in remote villages when the last train of the day broke for some reason at 12:30 am. All travellers and myself had to look for Ubers, which the government also tries to suppress.
I agree with some comenters that German companies seem to prefer to stuck with Bureaucracy other than finding what could be confortable or even human solutions.
No one is trying to suppress Uber. They are just obligated to adhere to the law like anyone else in this business.
Italy is pretty similar, and I would say even worse, but after reading / hearing more about DB I think they're just competing for being the worst train company ever
Once I was travelling back to home from Munich and the train stopped somewhere in Frankfurt in the middle of nowhere. Literally stopped on the tracks and it was completely dark outside except some far away lights from the houses around.
We waited for 3 hours, with 2-3 explanations which did not make any sense. After 3 hours the train started riding again and I arrived in Cologne, which is ~1h away from home still, and they said this is the last station. I needed to spend the night in Cologne in a hotel, because it was 3 o'clock in the morning and there was no other train to my hometown.
Fortunately I was able to get a refund plus the hotel cost for that night back.
The train arrived on time, we checked our tickets to see which coach we were on and walked down the train looking for it. We get to the end of the train, odd, we must have missed our carriage so we turn around for another pass. Then we start to notice other confused expressions.
We eventually figured out the problem: they had accidentally left the sleeper coaches in Hamburg, a full 180 miles away as the crow flies, or almost half our entire journey.
After waiting on the platform for about an hour, busses arrived to take us to Hamburg. We're now quite tired and our bed on a train is now a seat on a bus.
We finally get to Hamburg at about 3:00 the next day, walk to our beds and we're ready to collapse. Surely they're not going to come and inspect our tickets at this time?
They came and inspected our tickets at around 3:30. Two and a half hours later we were in Cologne. Yay.
The only thing I can agree is the "speaking only in german as if it was the lingua franca of the world". Germany is part of the EU. The EU has 24 langueages. You should at least speak in English. And no, my mother language is not english but spanish.
At 8:15 they dropped us off several stops away from the airport, claiming this train could not continue because it was so delayed. So we hung out in the country...
I finally go to the airport at 9am, rushed to the gate, but they people manning the counter had left (it's usually the flight attendants that man the counters I guess). I called the airline to try to get someone up there, but after waiting 45min on hold the flight had boarded and it was too late.
also, whatever jackass put ellipsis "..." substitution on the Munich flight board because "H32" or whatever was too long to fit into to their div and they couldn't bear messing out their UI, needs a flogging. The UI on the flight board is completely useless, but OH does it it look pretty
Delays are to be expected, trains cancelled without reasoning, train stations skipped in similar ways as described on the article, and if using connections, better plan for at least 30m interval, while taking into account a plan B for every connection that might be missed.
Living in the Netherlands (not native Dutch) I will now rather fly than take a train if it means that I can avoid using DB.
For contrast, tomorrow morning I am heading from the Netherlands to Paris with a train (non DB), and don't really expect anything but a pleasant and smooth journey.
Events like this seem to only be explained by accountability sink[0]. Naming it gives me some brief sense of sanity.
I appreciate that there is a safety concern; where's the humanity in large systems, especially as we trend towards more automation?
[0] https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/accountability-sinks
Russian trains only get delayed if there's something seriously wrong. Like an accident or an act of sabotage because of the war. A month or so ago, a Sapsan train from St Petersburg to Moscow broke down en route. People had to wait for hours to get out. It made big news. As far as I can tell, this is a weekly occurrence in Germany.
If you don't buy a seat, you don't get a seat. I was taking the 4am train 8 hours from Brussels to Berlin, and I bought seats for both legs of the trip. To sleep, of course.
The first leg of the trip was delayed, so they gave me a free ticket on the next train, 40 minutes later, but with no seat.
So, exhausted as all hell and wanting nothing more than a little nap, I was forced to stand in one of the hallways between the carriages, unable to rest much even vertically because people had to push past me to get to the bathroom.
Absolutely horrid experience.
The operator is called National Express. Their trains look completely different than the ones of Deutsche Bahn.
It was pretty fun, I used it a lot, those beer/disco clubs on the train between Düsseldorf and Bonn and Frankfurt, whoa, just .. really used to be fun.
So its real sad to hear of, what was once a great institutions’, demise ..
We had a trip planned in which we needed a specific train. The website said “there has been an incident on the tracks. There will be a delay of 20-50 minutes waiting for a platform. Not all connections will be made,” and that is exactly what happened. This worked for our time window so we took the train. But there were a lot of confused and upset passengers who had absolutely no idea what was going on.
I’m sure DB has many problems, but one of them appears to be communication that surely isn’t too difficult to fix.
I changed my ticket to get a French train as soon as possible.
Other survival story: I lived in Northern Germany in the late 2000s as a young exchange student. Almost all the DB lines in the region would go through a particular railway node where, almost every Friday, someone (probably an evil reincarnator) would commit suicide, blocking the whole region.
My reflex: so as soon as the train would stop, I'd get out, get a taxi, then convince 4 other people to go to Hamburg or even Hannover with me, sharing the cost.
Never regretted.
In Dresden we were told that they had issues with the power lines on the Czechia side and had to leave the train. It was still an hour to the border but seemed to be the best place to dump all the people and let them go the merry way the rest of the journey. The basic service was a printed paper directly out of the connection lookup system. No info if this connection is actually the best or makes sense since other travelers will be also on route. We had to switch trains 2 more times and arrived in Prague at around Midnight. Let’s say I really don’t want to take the train anywhere at the moment. Sidestory. Check the current state of the S-Bahn Service (run by DB) in Berlin. One wonder why they bother to announce issues with the system day in and out. They could just switch over and announce when stuff is running smoothly instead.
The weirdest thing in my city is that the bus driver often forgets 1 or 2 stops. There was a kid bursted into tear when she lost her direction on her way back home from school because the bus driver took a "wrong" path.
The manned DB Travelcenter was still open so I walked in and asked for an international ticket to Warsaw. The gentleman (who spoke fluent English) typed a bit on the computer and told me he cannot sell a ticket for the Berlin-Warsaw leg of the journey due to a "system error on the Polish side". I knew that probably meant the Berlin-Warsaw-Express is at full capacity again and they don't sell tickets with no seat indicated for that route. I asked for a ticket to Berlin instead (€207, 2nd class) and went for a hamburger - still had about an hour until the train.
The train was initially supposed to arrive delayed 5 minutes but that was soon to change. The delay kept ticking up to 20 minutes, 45 minutes, 1 hour (around this time the DB travelcenter closed for the night) then two hours then cancelled altogether. I wasn't sure if my ticket is valid for the next train (the DB website was a bit vague about that) so I called my friend in Hamburg who confirmed I was good to jump onto the next train which would arrive on schedule in another three hours. I tried getting a Capri-Sun from a vending machine but it got stuck and wouldn't fall out. So I sat at the empty station with noting but rats as company until 3AM when the next Berlin-bound train arrived on time. In Berlin I got out at Sudkreutz and jumped onto a FlixBus to Poznań (€22) and stayed the night over at my friend's place (I badly needed a shower at that point) before taking a train to Warsaw the next day (€16, 2nd class).
Now, I technically did eventually use my Frankfurt-Berlin ticket but I was quite annoyed at DB so I applied for a reimbursement due to a cancelled train, which was granted in full. I also applied for reimbursement of the plane ticket from Lufthansa which was also granted. With the additional €250 compensation for denied boarding I actually made money on that little adventure but I probably wouldn't do that again. Gotta check in earlier from now on.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtbahnwagen_B#/media/File:K... / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinuferbahn / https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtbahnstrecke_Bonn%E2%80%93... )
The Swiss railways are excellent and friendly. In Milan, I was unable to catch the reserved train to Zurich, but the conductors on the Swiss train that was just departing even accepted my ticket for the Italian railway.
It’s much worse than that – FedEx would never treat cargo like that. If they took cargo further away from its destination than it started and then left it there for the customer to sort out, that would break so many SLAs …
But at this point, I'm convinced you should avoid any train in and around Germany. This includes Denmark as well. Just take a plane, but don't have a layover in Germany. The same could probably be said about France. My first train from Paris to Nancy stopped for about 2hrs in the middle of nowhere. As the machinist said: "The train is tired."
Other countries like Italy or Spain seem to actually have well-functioning rail though.
I do support having basic public transport and solid bike infrastructure for young people, but once you’re 25 or older, there’s little justification for relying on such low-quality public transport.
I’ll be going to Prague next year, and I’m fully willing to drive for hours rather than sit on a train that keeps getting delayed, is unpleasant to be on, and costs far too much.
The UK government hates how expensive it is to operate, so they are reducing subsidies and massively prioritising the most profitable routes and raising prices.
Staff got nice condition/pay bumps during COVID and all have the attitude that they are doing us a favour. I don't mean that lightly or that I've had one bad experience with a member of staff on a bad day. They are work-shy, offensive, rude, lacking training and plain bad tempered.
I'm very pro car now these days, which is exactly what the Government wants.
But ooof, the few times I had to cross the border to Germany by train were hell.
I appreciated the NS from that moment on more...
We had a lot of issues in the past with the first leaves falling on the track or a bit of snow. And they ordered trains without toilets. So also cattle trucks.
And have I mentioned that you pay a lot for this "service"? second class, normal costs: €18,80 to get from Utrecht to Amsterdam and back, 50 kilometers.
The opening paragraph contains some factual errors (you can only get kicked off a train when you do something illegal) and the whole story lives by exaggeration and missing facts.
It is as moronic as saying people were kidnapped when a plane had to divert because of the weather. Also he would have been entitled to get a paid cab ride to his destination when that happens. But that is just one of the facts he did not mention.
This story should be ignored and tossed into the local legends garbage.
Of course the train could not stop. It was not registered!
A bit like "no frills" airlines in the west.
I've been trapped inside my landlord's house and my employer's office and they keep trafficking me between each other using a train.
They take turns raping me mentally and financially. S.O.S. Help!
I'm french, my first trip in this country was epic. First time going to Köln ( Cologne ), the train back to the airport never arrived, with no explanation. I was literally stranded in another country without money.
What should be the sweet spot?
I'd rather go through dante's inferno than live in Germany. What a bleak existence.
German bureaucracy. They should just learn from the Swiss. Because the Swiss actually understand how to be effective in bureaucracy.
Is it possible that running a railway at a national scale is harder than people who merely travel on it reckon?
They have some policy that they need to give you a reason for a delay and they'd happily announce something like "we're late because of another train in front of us" and the irony is, of course, the train in front of us is probably late, too, and you never get to know the real reason. No, strike that. The real reason is because the entire system is completely messed up. Train time tables are fantasy by now.
> In DB’s official statistics, a train counts as “on time” if it’s less than six minutes late.1 Cancelled trains are not counted at all.2 If a train doesn’t exist, it cannot be late.
This is true and it is ridiculous.
So as a fanboy, I am saddened by how bad DB has become. Once you’re on the train, and it actually goes, and it goes all the way to the destination, it’s still fantastic. All of the above generally still holds. But the many hours I’ve spent in the dark in cold windy places like Duisburg Hbf gleis fünf are uncountable, and it really does discount from the experience. I don’t remember the German trains being this late, this often, a ~decade ago. I really hope DB will get its shit together because there’s a lot worth saving.
Well, I'm all pro public transport, but please make it work first.
As you can probably guess, this is not at all what happened. Shit started to disintegrate around Viersen, we did some shuffling and waiting for later trains, and wound up in Aachen around midnight. The hotel across from the train station was closed for the night, we weren't going to stay in the nearby hostel after seeing one too many horror movies, and so we walked over a mile to a nearby hotel. Staff was lovely. We got in to a room by 01:00, showered, plugged in all our devices, and passed out around 02:00. Up at 05:00 and back to the train station to catch a ride to Rotterdam (very full train), and then on to Amsterdam. We hit our hotel about 12 hours behind schedule, changed clothes and got on with it.
Germany and France had the worst trains. Italy was insanely efficient/on-time.
While there's valid issues to complain about, this blogpost is really hyperbole. And frankly, to someone who has lived in the area, it reads purposefully disingenuous.
Just enter the places he mentions on Google Maps. Everything in NRW is so close together that to travel between cities you can often choose between international trains, regional trains or even just public transport.
The connection he needed, is serviced several times per hour by several different train lines.
Why did he stay on that specific train when he heard his stop would be skipped? The only reason I can think of is to write this blogpost. Since he's local to the area he should have known better.
Also it's worth noting that driving that same route by car, at that time, just a couple of hours before everyone starts their Christmas dinner, might've taken even longer.
I'm not trying to deny common issues with the DB but the author tried to travel through the densest urban area in the whole of Europe during the busiest 2-hour window of the whole year. AND he made a bad judgement call. To leave the transportation hub, staying on a long distance train which was already being re-routed.
Funnily enough, the fact that every "Kuhdorf" needs to be connected by train is one of the difficulties the DB faces for which there is no easy solution. And if a long-distance train needs to decide between dropping some stops which can also be reached by short-distance trains or delaying the whole train, I think that dropping those short-distance stops is absolutely the correct choice.
I visited the Dachau concentration camp several years ago on one of the hottest days of the year. Me and my GF packed water, but on that day is just wasn't enough and we ran out towards the end of the day.
We got around the camp and just before leaving we went into the cafe and asked for a drink, but they said sorry the cafe was closed.
Okay, fair enough. In that case we'll just fill our bottles with some tap water then.
"No, you can't do that".
Huh? We really need a drink... We've been on coaches and walking around all day and we've ran out of water.
"Sorry, I can't help".
We have our empty bottles here, could you please just pour us some water?
"No, sorry I can't".
I get she probably wasn't suppose to serve customers after close, but we just wanted her to fill our water bottles with tap water. I may be misremembering now but I'm like 80% sure I asked if I could fill the bottle in the toilet, but she also refused to open to toilets because they were closed.
This whole situation would have been absolutely absurd in the UK.
Germans really seem to like doing everything as per the rules regardless of how inconvenient and ridiculous it is. Even things like crossing roads where generally most Brits will wait for a green light, but if in a hurry many will look for a gap in traffic and just cross. Germans seem to rarely ever do this and you get the sense you are being judged if you do it.
I had lots of weird little experiences like this in Germany but almost passing out from dehydration at a German concentration camp had a certain level of irony to it.
Right out the gate 1st class tickets being half the price of standard tickets on same train does not fill me with confidence that this is organized in coherent fashion
I've only encountered flexibility and slight discomfort in a few cases where something has happened. I'm not entirely sure what Germans expect DB to do. A car had an interconnecting door problem and had to remove that car from the train. Everyone had to filter in to other cars to compensate for the lack of seating. Should they instead cancel those tickets? Or make them stand? It was a full train, and no answer is the correct one for everyone involved. I ended up giving my seat to an elderly gentleman and sat between cars on the ground. Mild discomfort but literally nobody was to blame for this. I suppose I could have gotten the next train but I didn't want to wait - that's also not DB's problem to fix.
Another time, my train was delayed for several hours. Of course I was quite annoyed but found out the reason was that someone had offed themselves in front of one of the trains before it, bringing the line to a standstill while it was dealt with.
Most of the whining I've heard about DB boils down to inconvenience in situations nobody could have predicted nor helped, and this almost insatiable attitude by some Germans that any inconvenience is an offense to Germany seems always to be directed at an otherwise highly reliable and robust trnasporation system whilst having zero other frame of reference. Seriously, come to the US or, from what I've heard, the UK. Then tell me Germany's is awful with a straight face.
This article reads exactly like that. You weren't kidnapped. You were rerouted. Don't dilute words like that, it just undermines your point.
I know you bought a ticket for a train from the main station in ljubljana, and when you come there (and only then and there, not before, not online), you'll be notified that your train is leaving from a track a 10 minute walk away, because the station is being renovated.
And sure, you were a responsible traveller, came early, so a 10 minute walk is no problem... there are supposedly dots on the asphalt showing where to go, but they're already wiped off, so some granny or a college student will probably point you in the right direction.
So after you walk all that way to the right train tracks, and the train should already be there, you'll be notified that there is no train. Why? Someone jumped infront of the train somewhere. When? A few hours ago. But hey... there's a bus that will take you with your train ticket.
Where is the bus? Back at the main station, 10 minutes away. Surely you were very responsible and came not just 10 minutes early but 20 minutes early, because the bus leaves at the same time the train should leave.
The only thing worse were the international trains in the early 2000s through the balkans... you'd be in Zagreb, croatia, waiting for a nighttime international train towards ljubljana, slovenia, 5 minutes to departure, and dingdong, announcement, it says it'll be 10 minutes late. Wait 10 minutes, so 5 minutes until the delayed departure... dingdong, 20 minutes late. Ok.. 10 more minutes... the display shows 30 minutes. I mean... you could risk it and go for a coffee or something, but it's not worth walking all the way to a nicer bar and back if you only have 10 minutes until the train.
...and then, when the delay says 50 minutes, you get a phonecall from a friend, who's on that same train (travelling from thessaloniki), and she tells you that the train is ~6 hours late and that they just crossed the serbian->croatian border (5-6 hours away from zagreb).
Just after Hannover but before Dusseldorf and such the train stopped: fire next to the tracks. Honestly, not DB fault this time.
Luckily DB trains have a restaurant/cafe in them. I went to get some food but the man behind the counter told me it was closed.
I asked him how since he was the seller, he stood there, there was power and internet. What's the problem?
Well, he said. And I shit you not: my shift is up. I have worked 8 hours. I am done.
And he was serious. Never mind that he was stuck on the train, just like us. Never mind that the replacement obviously wasn't there yet since they were stuck waiting on the next platform.
Nope. He works 8 hours. 8 hours done. He done. A thousand thirsty and hungry (and annoyed) on his train. He has food, drinks and time. But he just didn't give a shit.
He just stood there, for 2 hours, waiting to get off.
To Dutch people German civil servants are like NPCs following a very narrow script. It's baffling.
This is an effect of privatization gone wrong, with the national service, the infrastructure, the regional services (each), the network (not in infra), cargo and then some (sub)companies split for privatisation and an IPO that never happened. The highly segmented network is not digitalized in to any standard, so regional trains have to operate in policy frameworks and network cells that favor long distance trains. Its utter chaos on a daily basis.
You have to understand that Germany is currently led by a mix of trauma and economy as religion rather than reason to get a sense of what is happening.
To simplify, Germany is somehow convinced that any inflation and rules deviation is an unstoppable slippery slope towards a return to the 20s and paving the way to some kind of nazi apocalypse. They therefore follow a rigid economic system, ordoliberalism, which to put it nicely, doesn't have a strong academic following.
As a result, they have implemented a mercantilist economy using internal devaluation while shielded by the euro and stubbornly refuse to recycle their surplus in the union or even in the country. You get this absurd situation where they have enshrined a balanced budget in their constitution while their median household wealth is bellow Italy, their infrastructures is crumbling, a significant portion of their savings finance foreign debts - especially bad foreign debts judging by what they lost with the Lehman bankruptcy - their industry fails to invest and the country is basically non ironically saving itself to irrelevance.
Honestly, if it wasn't for the beggar thy neighbors policies and them mostly refusing transfers despite benefiting hugely from the currency at the expense of the poorer members, it would be amongst the funniest quirk of history.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/oct/08/...
They stopped caring about their main customers and tried to compete with planes.
On top of that everything traffic related seems to be reserved for the least competent politicians.
> Only then I notice: the driver has been speaking German only.
Oh wow a German conductor in a German train speaking German oh how awkward...
No you were not "kidnapped" your train just stopped at a different station.
> “That’s a different federal state.”
Yes and if you go to many cities in Europe and the US you can walk from one country to another. Oh wow shocking I know /s
Of course this is Deutsche Bahn at its best (in getting hand and feet mixed up) and that compensation is ridiculous. It should at least get your ticket back to the place you intended to go.
Neuwied to Troisdorf is 1h by car or train (in a good day of course)
Gotta love the "free" market and "democracy".
For example in country 400k€ was spend on executives (200 hundred people) Christmas dinner for publicly owned company.
While the scheduling and company management is similar issues as DB. I think we ned a new word for this kind of clusterfuck!! They are "rulesfull", rules that hinder the system and make the user scream in pain and agony.
You may find the train has now "registered" itself at the next station.
It will reveal driver to be using intentionally tricky language. "Cannot stop"
It's not that the train can't stop, trains can obviously stop wherever and whenever they want. It's not that the doors cannot open - train doors can be opened by the driver or by passengers, trains have emergency egress requirements.
The problem is that nobody actually wanted to get off that train. They wanted to complain about it. Comparing it to a kidnapping is offensive and absurd. That's now how people act when kidnapped.
They get stopped for speeding near their home in Florida, the police arrest them, take them to the county jail where they are stuck without bond waiting for extradition to the county where the warrant was issued. You might wait a few weeks in a cell, then you can spend another five weeks stuck in the back of a van, pissing into a cup while they drive you 3000 miles to Seattle, stopping at 25 other jails on the way. Only for Seattle to give you a court date and kick you out of the door with nothing except the clothes on your back. Except it's 40°F and you were arrested in a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops. The cops in Florida have your phone and wallet. You have no phone numbers. You have no money. You're 3000 miles from home. Good luck, champ!
(this is a real thing that happens regularly in the USA)
The constant comparison to cows, for example, suggesting it’s ok and normal to mistreat non humans, instead of making the far more obvious connection that if a human who is understanding exactly what is happening goes through so much suffering with a slight change of schedule, the fear and suffering cows and other animals who are constantly being transported in far worse conditions with no idea what is happening may be going through.
The comparison to kidnapping is also really bad. I’ve taken a plane that had been diverted to the wrong, unfriendly, country and then been unable to leave a tiny terminal, with no to limited access to food, water and restroom facilities for hours, and the idea that we were being kidnapped never crossed my mind, although actual kidnapping by the state we were in was a remote but real possibility.
