Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

theocharis.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#351

Post by locallost »

microtonal wrote: post #81
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,…

Still, in Germany only 58.8% of the trains were on time in 2025 [1]. Maybe it's not as bad as the author states, but it's certainly valid complaining about it. I lived in Germany for five years and for longer stretches it was certainly very common to have a 30-60 minutes delay. A lot of my colleagues would even do trips like Stuttgart Leipzig by plane because they hated traveling with DB so much. [1] https://chuuchuu…

I live in Germany and take the train all the time. There were always kind of clusters of issues, but lately I haven't had many problems, especially not major, don't really remember what the last time was I got any compensation for over an hour delay. The last time was maybe two years ago.

I wonder sometimes how these things develop because if you're objectively pissed off that your train was delayed, I cannot imagine enjoying taking the plane, or even worse a car. Like I haven't had a plane take off on time in my life. I took only a few business trips with the car and was stuck in traffic every single time. So objectively despite experiencing issues with DB myself, it's a lot better than my experience with alternatives. Stuttgart - Leipzig has a direct connection, and in my experience the biggest reason for a delay is when you miss a connecting train. E.g. your train is 15 minutes late but you had only 10 minutes to change trains. So other than the train going out of service I honestly can't imagine what the issue would be. You sit for 4h, can work comfortably, it's quieter than anything else, you can have a coffee or a beer, a meal etc. etc. And then maybe you'll have a half hour delay, but you can get that with anything else also.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#352

Post by thesimon »

em-bee wrote: post #323
xenocratus wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

germans don't use credit cards. finding an automated ticket machine thst handles credit cards would be extremely rare.

DB machines have been accepting all sorts of cards for a long time (Visa, AMEX, Discover). Local vending machines might vary though.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#353

Post by carlmr »

svara wrote: post #293
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…

As far as DB goes, I'm pretty sure it's mostly an issue of systemic technical and consequently social collapse. The system runs beyond its limits and consequently the culture collapses because the people inside learn they have no agency. The German rail network is quite good on paper, with dense and high frequency connections even to relatively remote locations. But keeping that functional (particularly with constant…

>invest more relative to their passenger load.

For Switzerland does this account for the almost double salaries or only absolute spending?

If you spend 1€ in Switzerland I imagine you get much less work output than for 1€ in Germany.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#354

Post by rjzzleep »

svara wrote: post #293
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…

As far as DB goes, I'm pretty sure it's mostly an issue of systemic technical and consequently social collapse. The system runs beyond its limits and consequently the culture collapses because the people inside learn they have no agency. The German rail network is quite good on paper, with dense and high frequency connections even to relatively remote locations. But keeping that functional (particularly with constant…

The German rails network went downhill when they decided to socialize the losses and privatize the profit. Failure is blamed on the grunt workers, which are absolutely not interested in taking responsibility as a result of this. The fact that there are rotting railways everywhere and the DB waits until it gets so bad for cities to step in and take over part of the cost is a wonderful example of this. The new ICE's speed is actually lower than previous generations.

I have seen this systemic problem in other domains I worked in. The problems are very similar, and at the end of the day I can somewhat relate to the workers attitude of "why should I lean out of the window if I get punished anyway". But in some cases the workers are unfireable and oftentimes it is exactly that attitude that let the management get away with the terrible working conditions (most of the times more psychological than physical abuse) so it feeds into each other.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#355

Post by whstl »

encom wrote: post #321
prmoustache wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being under any obligation doesn't mean it is not a sensible a courteous way to do. You like it or not, english has become a defacto common international language. While I speak 5 languages and try to learn some basic words of the local languages of any country I visit out of courtesy (how to say hello, bye, thank you, ask where are the toilets, etc), I wouldn't expect any traveller to know enough to understand t…

>common international language Not nearly as much as people on the internet seem to think. In large parts of Europe, speaking english will get you absolutely nowhere.

I mean, whenever the Deutsche Bahn is involved, in large parts of Germany speaking German will also get you absolutely nowhere...

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#356

Post by mschuster91 »

ACCount37 wrote: post #138
harddrivereque wrote: post #25

Deutsche Bahn has gone from not perfect to straight up disastrous and antisocial in the past years. They use scamming approaches more misleading than airline's and in cases straight up lie. It's rightfully headed for insolvency despite billions of wasteful and wrongful state funding. I hope that company goes under as soon as possible. Any other solution to the railway system management is better than DB. DB is not go…

If a company fails this hard, the solution isn't to feed it more government money to prop it up. It's to let it fail and rebuild from scratch. Blacklist everyone who was involved above a certain rank. Put together an entirely new structure. The only real way to get rid of this kind of rot is to make the consequences of dysfunction hit.

The DB is and always was fully owned by the government, this is not the usual case of "dumbass executives mess things up".

Unfortunately, the DB first got hit by Thatcherite neoliberalism in the early 90s that led to "unprofitable" things like switches, railyards or lesser-used routes to be torn down and the real estate sold off (to prepare for a privatization that THANK GOD never happened), and then we got 16 years of Conservative traffic/infrastructure ministers whose job priority was to funnel money to Bavarian highways [1], not towards railways.

Unfortunately, while the left wing loves to prune its ranks in purity tests (partially because its voters demand accountability), the Conservatives have a solid "better dead than red" voter base.

[1] https://www.merkur.de/politik/csu-parteitag-bayern-markus-so...

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#357

Post by thesimon »

apexalpha wrote: post #334
YorickPeterse wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Netherlands has a very similar problem: the train system was privatized in the late 90s/early 2000s and has been going downhill since the 2010s or so. While it's still better than Deutsche Bahn, it's just so much worse compared to how it used to be.

The Dutch train system is not privatised, the government owns 100% of both the tracks and the main carrier: the NS.

Same in Germany and basically all of the EU.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#358

Post by PurpleRamen »

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…

Humanity has been codified into rules, and the rule does not allow throwing out people somewhere random, because that would be differently inhuman (and someone would sue you if they have a bigger harm than lost time).

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#359

Post by konradha »

r9295 wrote: post #265
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.

The millstones of the gods grind late, but they grind well. It depends where you're from -- there is always potential for dramatic change in a people as obedient as the German.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#360

Post by apexalpha »

matrss wrote: post #260
Zufriedenheit wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DB is not privatized. It is 100% owned by the state.

DB has been reorganized as an AG in the 90s, i.e. a corporation under private law. They are forced to (at least try to) make a profit for their shareholders, which is a common trait of private organizations. They consistently do so via short-sighted (mis-)management, another common trait with many private organizations. This privatized corporation is indeed fully owned by the state as its only shareholder, but unfort…

> They are forced to (at least try to) make a profit for their shareholders,

This is not true at all.

The shareholders set the targets and since the shareholder is the government they can set any target they want: profitability, more trains, cheaper tickets etc..

If the shareholder wants to inject 10% every year in stead of taking a profit they are absolutely free to do so.

Post reply on HN