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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#91

Post by abigail95 »

manarth wrote: post #38
abigail95 wrote: post #20

I don't tolerate this kind of thing. If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath, and where you are. 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'…

> "If you find yourself in a similar situation and want out - call emergency services, say chest pain, out of breath" Being stuck on a train that's arbitrarily changing stops is irritating and disruptive to passengers. Faking a medical emergency is also disruptive to passengers, and also to the emergency services, who may prioritise the hoax call over genuine emergencies, which risks other peoples' health. > "The pro…

It's not a fake emergency. Acute anxiety causes the same thing. That's for a hospital to decide, not a train company.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#92

Post by a2fz »

rwmj wrote: post #16
huhkerrf wrote: post #4

DB is continually the worst train experience I have in Europe. I have never been on a train in Germany that's on time or that stops at the right station. Several times I've had to find someone young (and who speaks English) and say, "I'm just going to follow you to the next train." I've been told that the UK is worse, but I don't have much experience with it outside of Eurostar.

UK trains are terrible. I don't have direct experience to know if they are worse than DB trains, except for DB's dire performance being a running joke amongst my German colleagues at work. 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…

> that won't even go into the centre of our capital city

Is Euston not the centre? Where all the other trains from the north-west come into, and literally on the same road as Kings Cross St Pancras? Plus Old Oak Common is going to be an interchange with the Elizabeth Line.

People also miss the fact that a big reason why HS2 is being built is to take load off of the West Coast Main Line, which is running at full capacity at the moment. There's no room to run additional services. Even though some unfortunate compromises have been made, this will still massively benefit parts of the North because they'll be able to get more frequent services once the line is no longer clogged up by trains from London.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#93

Post by jeroenhd »

microtonal wrote: post #68
drunx wrote: post #24

I lived 15 years in The Netherlands and 3 years ago moved to Germany. 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. - th…

And being delayed for 15-40 minutes, getting thrown out in the middle of nowhere, or having to continue by bus is an inconvenience for most people, but a nightmare for people with disabilities. Imagine being in a wheelchair, having a digestive condition (Crohn, IBS, etc.), or some sort of anxiety. I imagine that there are groups of people in Germany that simply do not travel anymore. It is an area where proper govern…

> Dutch law requires at least 90% of the trains to be on time (less than 5 minutes delay

Yes, however, any train delayed more than 30 minutes gets canceled entirely and doesn't get counted in the statistics. The train this article is talking about would not be registered late under Dutch terms (though it probably wouldn't have traveled comically far without stopping).

Not saying Dutch trains are as bad as German trains, but applying the same laws won't fix DB's problems.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#94

Post by hdgvhicv »

turbonaut wrote: post #32
rwmj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK trains are terrible. I don't have direct experience to know if they are worse than DB trains, except for DB's dire performance being a running joke amongst my German colleagues at work. 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…

UK and DE appear to use different punctuality metrics with a train being late after 3 minutes in the UK but 6 in DE. Latest punctuality figures for UK are 84.8% and DE 88.1%. Making an assumption on distribution I’d guess UK comes out slightly better. Of note, DE long distance stats are pretty bad! UK: https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/media/ebmnxxih/performance-sta... DE: https://zbir.deutschebahn.com/2024/en/interim-gr…

I’ve taken four international DB trains in the last 2 years, into Germany from Belgium and Denmark, and out to Switzerland and Austria.

In all 4 cases the train was delayed in Germany - the longest by 4 hours, one by a mere 30 minutes.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#96

Post by pjerem »

hexbin010 wrote: post #19
101008 wrote: post #10

I know the author mentioned this, but I just got nervous imagining this as a tourist who doesn't speak German at all. This shouldn't be like this. Why they don't help at all? 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.

> Why they don't help at all? 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

Idk how it is in Germany but my wife is currently trying to became a train driver in France and there are far more requirements that what you would imagine.

Even if the job is actually opened to basically everyone (and that’s pretty nice), you have to be in perfect physical and psychological shape with pretty strict tests, you have to be intellectually apt enough to follow the training which is pretty intense. You have to accept work conditions such as not knowing your work hours until the day before. You have to accept sleeping who knows where at least 2 times a week. You have to accept having only one weekend off per month.

So what happens is that when you have that much filters and you still want to hire train drivers, you can’t afford to expect your drivers to know another language on top of all of the rest.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#97

Post by ernst_klim »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #86
ernst_klim wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the whining I've heard about DB boils down to inconvenience in situations nobody could have predicted nor helped Somehow doesn't happen in most other countries I lived. These things are easy to deal with with a bit of redundancy, which as I've heard is lacking in Germany these days. I've had much better experience with trains in Russia despite much harsher weather conditions, much larger distances and much…

On the other hand, Russian trains are absurdly slow when conpared to Europe. The flagship "high-speed" service barely does 200 km/h.

That's true, but at this point I would prefer slow but steady over being disembarked at random *dorf or standstill in a middle of nowhere with zero signal and no clue when we'll get back on track.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#98

Post by sauercrowd »

tirant wrote: post #71
indiantinker wrote: post #17

DB is weird. They seem to make their own rules and then run the game and “dont tell the rules to anyone”. I was on my way to catch a flight from Munich to my home (Madrid). I didn’t knew that apparently at one point the train splits into two parts and the front part goes to the airport and the other part just goes to the nearby cattle farms and comes back in 3 hours. Google Maps - No idea Citymapper - what? English a…

I guess you took the S1 S-Bahn. Yes, it always splits in Neufahrn. Part of the train goes to the airport, the other section to Freising (a cute University city, by the way) 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 alway…

Strong disagree. For most parts travelling is a non-event these days.

A train that splits, on the way to the airport where there will be a lot of non-german speaking people, and for some reason only shows it on the platform is insane.

Having a train that splits on that route is already bad enough, but you HAVE to emphasize it on the train.

I know that I need to pay attention to this, because I've grown up with DB pulling all sorts of fucked up shit, but we should not accept that this is reasonable.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#99

Post by tsimionescu »

locallost wrote: post #56

I don't know what to make of this. Of course everyone has a right to be pissed off for losing time because of someone else's mistake, but at the same time the language is... I mean if you feel kidnapped because your train connection didn't work out I am not sure how you'd feel if you were really kidnapped. Was my family kidnapped when they were sitting for two hours in the airplane before takeoff because of xyz? No,…

> I mean if you feel kidnapped because your train connection didn't work out

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.

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