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

931–940 of 1001 posts

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#931

Post by hwj »

cyphar wrote: post #836
Etheryte wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things do not work well in general. DB is internationally infamous for its garbage service because everyone who has ever taken DB has a horror story. I lived in Germany some years ago and not once did I manage to catch a train that was on time for both arrival and departure. And this doesn't even touch on the topic of being stranded in the middle of nowhere as a regular occurrence.

As someone who has caught DB a fair number of times over the years, I think DB is most hated by Germans (who love to complain) and German locals. Maybe I've just been lucky so far, but as an Aussie it is hard to overstate the fact it is even possible to travel almost anywhere within the country and between several other countries by train for fairly cheap is already quite miraculous to me. Yeah, I've run into a fair…

I appreciate you sharing the positive experience as a neighbor, but unfortunately, the Deutsche Bahn is as bad as presented here. (I spend several years commuting to college via DB). Once my train stopped in a small village with the announcement "the train ends here". Thankfully, kind people picked me up.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#932

Post by dkarbayev »

tschwimmer wrote: post #821
creichenbach wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As per my other comment, Swiss trains (especially SBB) are not as pleasant as they get credit for. I get a lot that "you know, in other countries it's much worse", and it reminds me of software hosting, where it was normal in the past to be offline occasionally. Then Google et al. came and showed that much more reliability is possible with good engineering. I think there would be a lot of room for improvement.

Unlike other commenters, I agree that there are some (arguably significant) things to complain about. The first one is price - tickets are quite expensive. I frequently travel Zurich HB -> Lugano. This is 200km and costs a whopping 120+ CHF round trip. Zurich -> Geneva, Zurich Bern are similarly expensive. However, it's a bit hard to fault them as Switzerland is an expensive country and perhaps the high prices keep t…

Eh? Just checked in SBB Mobile, ZurichLugano is 68 CHF roundtrip (with Halb-Tax, of course, but if you live in Switzerland, it doesn't make sense to not have it unless you have a GA travelcard) with 2nd class.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#933

Post by NVHacker »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #308

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…

Why exactly you cannot get out and walk ? Just curious whether that's impossible or just not allowed ?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#934

Post by herunan »

You got Deutsche Bahned. IF anyone watches Jet Lag The Game on YouTube, they play hide and seek games around Europe, and whenever they're on a Deutsche Bahn something almost always goes awry.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#935

Post by moffkalast »

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…

TIL the entire German work culture is literally the Nuremberg defense. A bit on the nose.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#936

Post by Vinnl »

raverbashing wrote: post #283
pjmlp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German. I once had a bit of Schadenfrunde while travelling in Netherlands, having the conductor telling us to switch trains in Dutch, and all my German fellow travellers wondering what it was all about.

I wonder what's the level of mutual ineligibility between DE NL (probably DE is easier to NL) but it's funny how Germans sometimes seem to play dumb and not understand a thing in NL

I can barely follow German and I've been taught it in high school for a couple of years. I would not expect a German person to understand Dutch.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#937

Post by PaulRobinson »

_Microft wrote: post #785
PaulRobinson wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 han…

Tracks 3, 4 and 7 at the station in question are not adjacent to a platform. It sort of makes sense to route a train over these if there is no stop planned there (intentional or not). Here's the map of the station: https://www.bahnhof.de/troisdorf/karte

Of course it does. So it also makes sense that if you are operating that train, you make sure you don't end up on tracks 3, 4 or 7. You stop and verify that the signalling and routing is in place to let you stop at that station before it becomes too late and that option becomes impossible.

This is basic management, it's basic competence.

The train was misrouted because nobody cared about routing it properly: the driver, the conductor, the signallers, the routers, the management. Something weird happened and everyone shrugged and started to hum "Que sera, sera" to themselves, rather than committing to doing a job in the passengers' interests.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#938

Post by Etheryte »

alexfoo wrote: post #784
Etheryte wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, TIL. Trains don't do that where I'm from for obvious safety reasons, but I understand infrastructure everywhere comes with different baggage.

Anywhere with third rail (which is predominantly London and the South-East of England) tends to be fenced off along the sides of the tracks or other things in place to strongly discourage you from walking onto the tracks. Given that a considerable amount of the UK rail routes date from the late 1800s there are a lot of places where tracks cross roads and therefore mix with other forms of transport (including pedestri…

That is terrifying, thank you for sharing.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#939

Post by m_fayer »

cyphar wrote: post #836
Etheryte wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things do not work well in general. DB is internationally infamous for its garbage service because everyone who has ever taken DB has a horror story. I lived in Germany some years ago and not once did I manage to catch a train that was on time for both arrival and departure. And this doesn't even touch on the topic of being stranded in the middle of nowhere as a regular occurrence.

As someone who has caught DB a fair number of times over the years, I think DB is most hated by Germans (who love to complain) and German locals. Maybe I've just been lucky so far, but as an Aussie it is hard to overstate the fact it is even possible to travel almost anywhere within the country and between several other countries by train for fairly cheap is already quite miraculous to me. Yeah, I've run into a fair…

I live in Berlin but grew up in the US. Yep, Germany has much more train coverage than where I'm from originally. And that's great. But to understand the complaints you really have to spend some years living with the uncertainty created by the DB.

It depends which route you take, but for a wide swath of the German population, your chance of an absolutely wretched experience seems to be around 1 in 4. That means that people are constantly weighing the desire for affordable, sustainable, comfortable transport that may go horribly wrong, against the (similarly unpredictable) endemic traffic jams and exhaustion of driving, and often choosing wrong. If you have no car, you're weighing more reliable but slow and uncomfortable and traffic-jam-prone buses, or simply avoiding the travel. Constantly making decisions on penalty of deeply unpleasant consequences without any way to actually reasonably judge your decision is a special form of miserable.

At least in the US, most of the time, there is no decision to make: you drive.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#940

Post by twobitshifter »

lostlogin wrote: post #871
Freak_NL wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As someone travelling for the first time in a while - Wise has changed travel for the better, and dramatically. Managed 2 weeks in the UK without touching cash and the transactions between currency were inexpensive and quick. Massive fan.

How were you using it? I have only ever used Wise for bank transfers. There are travel credit cards without any foreign transaction fees and that’s what I always use.
Post reply on HN