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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#261

Post by attendant3446 »

amtamt wrote: post #157

Way back in 90's, when I arrived on an Indian Railway station about 10 minutes before the train's scheduled time, I was pleasantly surprised to find the train at the platform. 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…

I was in a similar situation in Egypt once. At the specified time a train arrives, I board it. Only to see that my seat is occupied. We started to discuss the situation and the other passenger showed me his ticket - it was one of the previous delayed trains. We figured it just in time for me to jump out of the wrong train before it left the station :)

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#263

Post by tzs »

nephihaha wrote: post #149
flexagoon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved to the Netherlands to study, and I experience that a lot. Despite almost all official information everywhere being written in both Dutch and English, in-train announcements are only done in Dutch. I have to constantly listen to the announcements and try to understand based off their vibe if they sound like something critical or not.

Dutch announcements in the Netherlands. Fancy that. Almost like it's the national language or something.

The Netherlands is in the EU. English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, even after the UK left, because it is by far the most common second language. Nearly half of the people in the EU can speak it.

In Northern Europe the percentage is even higher. In the Netherlands there are almost as many people who speak it as there are Dutch speakers.

Taking into account people from other EU countries who are there on business plus tourists there is a good chance that if only one language was to be used for train announcements more people on the train would understand if it was in English then if it was in Dutch.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#264

Post by rcbdev »

I never understood why the Germans cannot get their shit together on commercial train travel. Austria manages to coordinate a wonderful federal train system across nine federal states without issues via the ÖBB, the Swiss also seem to have it down.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#265

Post by r9295 »

konradha wrote: post #249

I do hope that sufficient humiliation will suffice for DB leadership to enact harsh measures. German precision and punctuality are still there in its people. It's not lost yet.

This has been the case since I moved to Germany, 6 years ago. National humiliation is apparently an insufficient detterent.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#266

Post by rplnt »

johnisgood wrote: post #212
SpaceNugget wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from the Netherlands to Budapest I started my journey with Deutsche Bahn. My train also did the split in half and go different directions trick. Was I supposed to learn Dutch, German, and Hungarian in order to buy my train tickets?

I said "travelling TO", and most of the time you do not need to know anything apart from the name of the city... and then I presume you have a smartphone as well. Come on. What did you do once you arrived in Budapest? Did you do your research or did you get scammed by the taxi mafia as well?

If you travel to Budapest from Berlin you buy the ticket from DB and the crew changes as follows: German, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian. None of the first three crews would speak Hungarian. Luckily all will be able to communicate in English.

(regular announcements oftentimes won't be in Hungarian until you are in Hungary, that depends on the train origin, but I would only expect local+English)

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#267

Post by prmoustache »

johnisgood wrote: post #112
rwmj wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's going to the airport and so might be full of travellers and tourists?

Unpopular opinion: you should learn the absolute basics of the language used in the country you are travelling to. Seriously? That unpopular? Lmfao.

Knowing the basics is knowing how to salute, thanks, ask basic directions. You can't ask everyone to know every single language they visit and be able to understand stuff mentionned in a foreign language in a possibly noisy environment and from an only half decent speaker system.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#269

Post by svara »

BloondAndDoom wrote: post #131

I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. I grew up in 3rd world country and if this were to happen, train would literally stop somewhere, anywhere. (With the assumption it’s safe from crewing into another train). 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 ans…

It's a big, systemically failing organization running way beyond its capacity. Failures rippling through and compounding in a tightly coupled rail network.

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.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#270

Post by pell »

junon wrote: post #15

Meh. I have lived here for 7 years, and get a bit tired of these sorts of complaints about DB coming from the US. Germans have exceedingly little, if any, patience for anything going wrong. DB is always painted as this evil, completely broken system when in fact it's been a joy compared to e.g. San Francisco. I've only encountered flexibility and slight discomfort in a few cases where something has happened. I'm not…

> Most of the whining I've heard about DB boils down to inconvenience in situations nobody could have predicted nor helped [..]

I agree with you that there’s a lot of complaining and it does get tiresome. The German train system is one of the most complex in the world and works closer to an interconnected spider web than the typical straight line systems in other countries.

However much of this has been predicted in the past. I think that’s why a lot of people are annoyed. Here are some sources if you’re interested to read more:

(2006) Audit critique regarding the bad state of DB funding after privatization: https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/16/008/1600840.pdf

(2011) DB is not spending enough on the track network: https://taz.de/Investitionen-in-das-Schienennetz/%215117195/

(2014) State of German train bridges: https://www.zeit.de/mobilitaet/2014-09/deutsche-bahn-bruecke...

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