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That's really unlucky. Before the Covid thing I took a long-distance train at least once per month for two decades, and I never managed to get stranded anywhere even when I chose late connections. Normally DB knows the connections passengers have, and it seems that if the last train of the day gets delayed the other trains wait for it to make sure no one gets stranded. I would really have enjoyed staying in one of those Intercity hotels at DB's expense.

The worst thing that happened to me was that the ICE train broke down in the middle of nowhere and the DB had to send another train and evacuate everyone from the original one over a gangway (it's not allowed to let passengers deboard in the middle of nowhere). Took more than four hours of waiting in an overheated train during summer. They sent me a box of really good chocolates as a "We're sorry" gift.

Lucky you. I was taking Koblenz to Utrecht some years ago and every week there was something going wrong in Germany on the way back. Once they just dropped me off in Bonn, no further service to Koblenz at midnight „sleep on the bench, we aplogize but can’t do anything”.

DB is nightmare. I had so many cases of missing trains when they had 1 hour delay on 1.5h track, connecting trains no waiting even for 5 minutes, cancelling train in last minute, etc.

The mess of DB isn't that much different from how the oligarchs in a lot of eastern European countries came to be. Privatization without real plan. Privatize the profits and socialize the losses.

The rails near Hamburg Altona are rotting, but the Bahn didn't want to foot the bill. So they came up with a horrible new station somewhere else. As a result the city chipped in to make a better one and pay of it from tax money.

I'm the last person to favour the government institutions in Germany. They're slow, lazy and full of old lazy hierarchies that must have been productive 30 years ago, but what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway? Half the ICE fleet is out of commission nowadays.

So, echoing what eisstrom wrote: Deutsche Bahn is fully state owned. That phrase about "privatizing the profits and socializing the losses" is a common but still mindless form of dross in this case. I do understand why it gets a particular group of uninformed people to upvote your comment out of reflex though. You use it as click-bait, sort of, while building a convoluted argument that presumably very few of those upvoters actually grok.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Bahn

Deutsche Bahn AG is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a private joint-stock company (AG), with the Federal Republic of Germany being its single shareholder.

It was privatized in 1994. It's actually interesting that to the outside world people believe that it wasn't privatized because of the weird holding structure that it has.

They actually brag about how the privatization in 1994 was a huge success. The history of the privatisation of the Staatsbahn is so convoluted that it's hard to tell what actually happened.

https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/erfolgreiche-weichenstellung-...

EDIT: just because privatization isn't the kind of privatization you like doesn't mean it didn't happen. especially since the people here have no idea about the actual internal structure of the institution and who the leadership answers to.

That article describes Deutsche Bahn being converted from a government agency to a fully state-owned "private" (public) company.

The word "private" as used here does not mean what you think it means.

("Mit der Bahnreform entstand ein Wirtschaftsunternehmen in privatrechtlicher Form. Der Bund blieb zwar alleiniger Eigentümer der neuen Bahn AG, er sollte allerdings nur noch bei strategischen Entscheidungen mitreden dürfen.")

The problem is probably more the EU directive that caused the privatization, because it requires that all European rail services compete commercially. Which means they are all required to make a profit even if it is a net negative to society. I can't wait for an EU directive that requires our firefighters to compete commercially, following the example of Marcus Licinius Crassus this would seem quite doable.

Wait, what problem? Do you also believe that Deutsche Bahn was privatized, as in the ownership being transferred from the government to private citizens? If not, can you please clarify for the benefit of other readers of the thread?

The problem that it __acts__ like a for profit privately owned company.

Ah. I guess that involves bourgeoisie things such as attempting to balance their budget.

Yes, the rail system needs to grow up and be like the wonderful privatized road system that charges tolls on all levels of streets to make sure it is not stealing from tax coffers to encourage pollution.

It's more nuanced than looking at this 'who owns it and is it really a privatization'. Back when the people working at DB were government officials there weren't so many problems, trains were on time and money was spent on the infra. Then they sent them all into early retirement and I guess everything is now more focused on profits (are there even any?) but the outcome is that it's badly managed and dysfunctional.

DB is not privatized, it is 100% state-owned. As far as I know, all ICE power cars are still in use today, except for the one destroyed in the Eschede accident.

> what is the point of privatizing something when the structure itself doesn't change and the privatization does nothing but siphon money out of the system and pump tax money in anyway?

That is the point.

Gigantic projects like nuclear reactors, stadiums, high ways, bridges, airports (hallo Berlin) trains (and big software projects and wars, too) are just different ways of funneling a significant percentage of the tax payer money funding the project into the politicians' and decision makers' circle's wallet.

In summary: because corruption.

You book a train from Aachen to Berlin. The first leg in your connection is late, you miss the ICE in the middle of nowhere. The next one is in four hours. You get in, the DB staff looks at you like you shit in their coffee. Booked a bike place and reserved a seat? The best they can do is to offer to stand between the carriages.

I've definitely had my "I hate DB" moments in my life and experiences similar to the one you describe, but for me, most of the time, I don't experience major issues (I don't count "train is half an hour late" to be a major issue, although I agree that it's kind of laughable that this happens so often - but I got used to it). It's definitely easier if you don't have to change trains or you don't take a super late train or anything.

Then there's also things that are consistently bad, like regional trains in NRW. They're never on time.

That's an interesting viewpoint and as someone living in the south of you, I have a hard time to understand why 30min is not a major issue. I feel more like after 5min, it's way to late :D ...

Most times I take the train is visiting my parents and it's a 9–10 hour journey. Considering that total time, half an hour certainly isn't that big of a deal. And by car the same distance would take nearly the same time, if not more, as the motorway isn't clear of other cars whenever you travel.

Admittedly, the most probable leg of the journey to get late or be disruped in any way is the very first one. Living in a town that has no long-distance rail connection you're forced to use local trains to the next major city anyway.

Well, it depends. For a half or one hour trip, of course that would be a huge delay (but that also doesn't happen so often except for some areas like NRW...), but I'm talking more about >4h trips without changing trains, and I really don't care that much about half an hour more or less in that case.

Of course, I'd prefer that trains were as punctual as in Switzerland but what can I do?

Maybe worth noting that the 9-euro ticket is only for local public transport, such as buses, subways, or regional trains. Only the latter (RE) are operated by Deutsche Bahn, whereas buses and subways are mostly ran by local companies.

I do not share your experience. I used to commute weekly for 1,75 hours in one direction with ICE. I had rarely problems that lasted more than 5 minutes. There was no change of trains required which might help here.

Same here: I regularly take long-distance train rides throughout all Germany, both with ICE (the fast one) as well as RE (the regional one), and for me it works smoothly for the most part.

Let me guess: Your commute was in East Germany? Reliability is a lot better there [1]

[1] https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...

No, it was the route from Hamburg to Munich or similar.

I worked for a company for 7 years and the only ICE (between our Munich and Würzburg office) I took that was not either: replaced with an IC, cancelled, or my reservation messed up... was the one to a company christmas party. So the table seat to be able to work on the ride happened exactly 0 times out of X where I tried. But I think they were at least on time and I wasn't stranded. Not that I should need to mention this...

If you beed to be on time, national flights with Lufthansa for me are close to 100% reliable whereas Deutsche Bahn turned out to be a catastrophe in about 50% of the cases. I still don’t get it: they own the complete network, they control every train on it and arriving on time at a place is like playing roulette. Neither air travel nor traveling by car gives those headaches (especially when you listen to your dynamic GPS that routes around traffic jams). You can reduce the bad luck a bit by planning longer stops when changing trains, still making pauses longer reduces the attractiveness of trains even more. Personally, I love taking trains when it works. It is comfortable, fast and you arrive in city centers. Even first class tickets have acceptable prices. But as I usually don’t travel for pleasure, but for business and don’t want to waste my time, German trains have become a no-go for me.

Lufthansa rarely gets "Personenschaden" ("injury to persons", an euphemism for "suicide") on their flight paths while Deutsche Bahn has frequently to deal with that. A delayed intercity express train definitely delays departure of other trains that are considered Anschluss(züge) ("connecting trains"). It then ripples through the network.

Then how do other countries get to a reliable service? Japan, Switzerland, France…

Having travel a few times TGV trains across france, while connecting to Switzerland, Belgium and Germany, I wouldn't consider them much better than German ones.

I still have a good story from a TGV travel from Paris back to Geneva that took the double of the time, partial return travel back to Paris, again reversed mid-way back to Geneva, being blocked on a trainstation on the middle of nowhere waiting for restaurant wagon supplies trying to calm down everyone, and finally arriving into Geneva several hours later than expected.

I cut lots of details on that reliable train trip.

Mostly by spending more money. Especially France and Japan built special rails only to be used by high speed trains. While those exist in Germany, there are less of them and they mostly don't reach from station to station but instead near the city centers high speed trains share rails with slower trains.

I like the „nightjets“ where you can sleep and wakeup in another city. Used that a few times.

I have to say, that if I have to be on time somewhere I take the car. DB is too much risk to miss the connecting train and the employees just look at you „well, bad luck. Next train 2h“

When I m on vacation i would file that under „experience“ and would just sit somewhere and sip coffee.

Okay, but when you compare to the US, it's still amazing.

Okay, but the US is 50x larger.

Sure, feel free to compare the trains in New York State vs Germany then.

The primary issue in NY is the subway service and the Amtrack trains coming in via the soon to be replaced portal bridge in NJ plus general Amtrack crappiness from other routes (not an NY problem). The commuter lines are decent. Though, with ridership destroyed it remains to be seen what impact the revenue shortfalls will have going forward.

That's only NY City though. If we consider the trains in Buffalo/Utica/Syracuse/Rochester/Albany I think you'll find it way more grim compared to equivalent German cities than what you're describing.

That's an Amtrack problem not NY specific.

I'm not sure how that's relevant though when just trying to compare travelling by rail in NY State to Germany; is the claimed problem with Amtrak that they have to cover more states than the German train system, and train system management doesn't scale directly causing rail to be worse in NY State than in Germany?

Okay, but with a GDP and population to (out)match, sooo not really relevant. Per capita and per square km, "German train system quality" is a bajillion times better than in the US.

The US has lower population density than Germany, so you need more km of rail to serve the same amount of people. But that only accounts for part of the difference in quality, to be sure

China has trains.

And China has an agenda and a government that is supporting the building of railways. It's successful.

In US the government was supporting the development of roads a century ago. It was very successful.

So is it about the size of the country or corrupt government?

I like trains.

trains

Why is it downvoted? He has a point.

I'm pretty sure Europe is bigger than US surface wise.

If you take a traditional definition of Continental Europe, including islands like Britain and Ireland, and going all the way into Russia as far as the Ural and Caucasus mountains, then Europe is slightly larger than the USA.

But if you're talking about just the European Union, then the EU is much smaller than the USA. Less than half the land area.

> Continental Europe, including islands like Britain and Ireland,

Continental Europe doesn't include Britain and Ireland.. That's kind of the point of the phrase.

Yeah he meant the European continent (the western half of Eurasia) rather than Continental Europe.

You’re right (had to look it up), though it’s only bigger by 3.5 %.

And we’ll over 2x the population.

Eh?? I thought they were quite similar... Mmm, yeah, EU population is only 447 million. You must be counting Russia and other countries too but those are outside of the socioeconomic system we're talking about.

The EU alone is under half the surface area of US, though, so it's like 3x the population density.

Ive had a Bahncard 100 (yearly pass for all fast trains in the country) for six years now and while there are problems, its about once a year, working out to about 1% of my train trips.

For air travel, Id guesstimate I get delays about 10-20% of the time.

What does large/long distance mean here? Do german railways extend outside of Germany proper? I'm confused because the longest distance I can find between two major cities is Munich to Hamburg, and that's only about 400 miles!