Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn • Hacker News Board

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#531

Post by jonasdegendt » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:31 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #471

jonasdegendt wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah nope! Even as a Belgian I find the naming of the Brussels train stations maddening. Brussels-Midi is the south station, so Brussel-Zuid. Midi allegedly means south in French, but I've never actually heard it being used over "sud", also south. In conversation, midi also means noon (e.g. used as "meet me at noon"), which for my brain correlates more with central than south, given the context of a day. Not a linguis…

In Europe (and anywhere else north of the Tropic of Cancer), the sun is always approximately due south at noon. That’s the reason for the connection, and “midi” indeed means both south (in some contexts) and noon in French.

Makes a lot of sense, thanks for the insight!

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#532

Post by solaire_oa » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:32 PM UTC

fbcpck wrote: post #412

p00dles wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you summarized my 5+ year experience living in Germany with one sentence in a way that I have never found the words for - thank you, really, thank you I feel that in Germany, the original intent of the many rules, processes, and procedures has been lost. Employees are trained to operate such that every situation is governed by a rule/process/procedure, and their job is to look up the situation in a massive leather-bo…

It is certainly my biggest dislike factor with my stay in Germany, and I'm still struggling to come to terms with it: do I dislike it enough to compel me to move away? is this something I can accept? How much can I influence and improve things that I directly interact with? It seeps in everywhere too, with almost all aspects. Day-to-day with restaurants, cafe, shops. Almost all interaction feels like it's actively ch…

I would summarize Americans (and perhaps most English speaking countries) as perceiving this mindset to be callous, ineffective, and a dereliction of autonomy.

But I'm interested in how Germans perceive Americans in reverse? If shop staff went out of their way to help them find a product, shoot the breeze, or recommend a lunch spot, would Germans tend to see this as being overzealous? Would it cause embarrassment, or be a pleasant surprise? Just curious.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#533

Post by SoftTalker » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #440

db48x wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. An Amtrak train would just stop at the next convenient road crossing, if there were really something preventing them from stopping at the scheduled station. Most Amtrak stations don't even have staff, or any way to prevent people from coming and going, so this would most likely involve construction on the station platform itself. That’s fairly rare but the last time I took the Zephyr headed east there was…

I don't understand ome detail of this story: Amtrak platforms are about 110cm high. That's more than waist high for most people. So how do you let people get on and off at a grade intersection instead of at a platform?

The trains carry a step that can be placed on the ground outside the door, so you can step down from the car.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#534

Post by tazjin » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

> Unfortunately nowadays traveling with DB has become a game of Russian roulette.

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.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#535

Post by potato3732842 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #493

potato3732842 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like we lost humanity somewhere in modern world. 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 h…

> 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. Yes. That is a good reason to not stop without a platform. But I tell you one even better. Look at the layout of the Troisdorf station. There are tracks with platforms, and there are through tracks. The trough tracks are surrounded by live tracks on both s…

>Yes. That is a good reason to not stop without a platform. But I tell you one even better. Look at the layout of the Troisdorf station. There are tracks with platforms, and there are through tracks. The trough tracks are surrounded by live tracks on both sides. If the train stops there, unlocks the doors, and somehow coaxes the people to climb down those people are immediately on a live track. To get off of it they have to cross the track and climb up a raised platform. And who knows when is a train coming on that track. The risk here is not breaking the nose of one old lady (which by the way, can easily kill an old person) but forcing hundreds of passengers into a meat grinder. But go on with your snark.

This is unfortunately exactly an example of the type of take I was complaining about.

Just let the people who are actually there and can actually see the situation use some judgement.

Arbitrarily halting traffic on an arbitrary section of track isn't something the parties involved don't know how to do. It's something that happens somewhere in the rail network every day for some reason or another. It's a supported function. I trust them to be able to invoke it.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#536

Post by cfstras » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:33 PM UTC

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,…

A couple years ago, I was at a station waiting for a (delayed) ICE train. I couldn't buy a ticket at the machine or with the app, since the train had already departed (if it had been on schedule). The ticket machine also wouldn't take VISA / MasterCard, only the more common Girocard (most people still call it EC)

Later, in the train, when I asked the conductor to buy a ticket with my Girocard, he said "That's not a commonly used payment method" and asked for VISA, or cash (not having any to provide change, obviously).

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#537

Post by zahlman » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

rvba wrote: post #480

zahlman wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> didn't support chip-and-PIN or contactless payments. As opposed to... swiping the card? Are there really cards out there that exclusively support that?

Prepaid gift cards (please note: those are not store issued) dont have chips and it is sometimes a problem to use them. But I doubt someone would buy a plane ticket with them.

A gift card isn't a credit card, though... ?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#538

Post by hexbin010 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

a2fz wrote: post #128

hexbin010 wrote: post #8

Deutsche Bahn seems very similar to most of the railway in England. Customer service is non-existent; delays are highly normalised. 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 li…

Customer service on British trains is excellent. It only takes a few minutes to claim Delay Repay if you're delayed more than 15 minutes, and you can even set it up to do it automatically for you. If your last train back home for the night is cancelled at 1am, you can message the company on social media and they'll pay £100+ to sort you out with a taxi for a distance like London to Cambridge. I consistently find rail…

I've taken trains regularly in England for 25 years. I disagree.

What's your experience?

And it's taken a massive turn for the worse since 2020

England is definitely worse than Scotland and Wales I grant you that. And fwiw, in Scotland, they have far less powers to prosecute compared to England, which is why they seem like they are more lenient

As I responded in another thread, not all operators are 15 minutes. Not that 25/50% often isn't really that much compensation...

And that taxi is far from gaurenteed.

I get the sense you had one or two good experiences and extrapolated?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#539

Post by f1shy » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:34 PM UTC

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'…

Faking a medical emergency emergency is both illegal and immoral.

In Germany in particular, you could be charged for all the expenses. A friend of mine did not fake, was in real panic, but still was at the end of the ”nothing” and had to paid the ambulance costs. Not cheap!

If you think you are being kidnapped or whatever, instead of lying and abusing EMS, you can call the police, and explain clearly what’s going on with the truth. If serious enough they will be able to act better in that case.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#540

Post by potato3732842 » Mon, Dec 29, 2025, 4:35 PM UTC

this_user wrote: post #403

Zealotux wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. 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…

So much in German work culture - and also culture in general - is about covering your own arse. If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process…

>If you follow the procedure, even if the outcome is disaster, you are not at fault; you were just implementing the rules, and you cannot be held accountable. It's the fault of whoever came up with the rules, except that is usually not a single person, but some amorphous entity that ran through some decision making process years in the past. So, no one is really at fault or can be held accountable.

Worse. You can't even take responsibility even if you want to, that's usually against the rules too.