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!!

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

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.)

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

I've been told that the UK is worse, but I don't have much experience with it outside of Eurostar.

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.

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

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdymgQmdK_A

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.

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...

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?

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.

The operator is called National Express. Their trains look completely different than the ones of Deutsche Bahn.

https://nationalexpress.de/de/re5

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 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)?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

( 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... )

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 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.

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.

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.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0rb9CfOvojk

What should be the sweet spot?

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.

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

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 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).

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.

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.

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.

I'd rather go through dante's inferno than live in Germany. What a bleak existence.

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.