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Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

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Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#301

Post by Freak_NL »

xenocratus wrote: post #239
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…

We took that train, realised when we got to the other end of the line that we hadn't gotten where we expected, then turned back to the place where it separates. Waited for the next advertised train to airport (it's signalled on the electronic board as two separate entries; yes, it says "board whatever carriages for airport, and the rest for ...", or at least I assume it did, as it was in German of course; but again,…

American Express I get. No one uses that in Europe. Visa and Mastercard debit cards are what everyone uses and they work in all German ticket machines. You weren't trying to use a credit card where you?

What language do you expect the Germans to use?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#302

Post by em-bee »

svara wrote: post #269
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…

train conductors are not controlling the train. that is done from a central (regional) control center that manages all trains of the region. only there someone decides where trains go or stop

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#303

Post by bitcurious »

My most recent Deutsche Bahn train was announced as being 3 hours late. I watched a few passengers leave the station to grab coffee nearby. The train arrived 10 minutes later, and left 5 minutes after that. The whole system seems broken.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#304

Post by ngruhn »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #223

Unfortunately nowadays traveling with DB has become a game of Russian roulette. If you get lucky the train arrives at the destination ahead of time and if you're unlucky most probably a delay of 4+ hours and missing your connecting train. 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 inef…

> If you get lucky the train arrives at the destination ahead of time

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.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#305

Post by tim333 »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #223

Unfortunately nowadays traveling with DB has become a game of Russian roulette. If you get lucky the train arrives at the destination ahead of time and if you're unlucky most probably a delay of 4+ hours and missing your connecting train. 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 inef…

In the UK the railways used to be kind of bad in the nationalised British Rail days. People moan about the current privatised rail but it mostly works.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#306

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?

> What did you do once you arrived in Budapest?

You will be perfectly fine staying in Budapest with just English; you can learn hello, please, and thank you to be polite. This goes for most bigger European cities, outside of France I guess.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#307

Post by PaulRobinson »

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…

You're touching on points that Ayn Rand touched on in Atlas Shrugged, which as it happens uses the dynamics of the running of a railway as a metaphor for organisational incompetence and which opens on a scene of railway workers refusing to take initiative and following policy blindly.

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".

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#308

Post by mystifyingpoi »

The term "kidnapped" is kinda over the top, but I can understand the author. I've travelled with Polish trains a lot when studying, and there were a few situations like this. Especially frustrating, if the train stops because of "some issue" while you can literally see the platform 200m away. No, you can't get out and walk the track (which will be guaranteed to be empty, because well, the train is broken) and take a bus or something, no, you have to sit there for ~2h until a replacement engine gets there.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#309

Post by mft_ »

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.

Basics for a casual traveller are 'hello, 'please', 'thank you', 'two beers', 'can I have the bill', and 'I'll take the schnitzel please'.

Perfectly understanding rapidly-spoken German explaining something esoteric about the splitting of a train is magnitudes, years of study beyond casual traveller level.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#310

Post by jtvjan »

fabian2k wrote: post #227
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…

Anywhere doesn't help you much. You want to stop at a station with sufficiently good connections to continue your travels. 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 plan…

I mean, to an extent... like it would still give passengers an earlier opportunity to correct course.

If they got off at the next stop after troisdorf they could take the local bus back to Troisdorf (ten minute wait worst-case).

At later stations they could get on the train in the opposite direction (30 min wait worst-case).

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