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Comment by Wytwwww | Hacker News Reader

> the country works like a clockwork

Except trains and government bureaucracy and a bunch of other things.

I recently was taking trains across Germany and while some where late and others went out of service there was always another to hop onto and it was easy to find.

Maybe not like clockwork but as a visitor from a country without a strong train network I was (easily?) impressed

Switzerland no longer accepts some DB (German Rail) trains crossing the border, they are forced to terminate early, and passengers have to change trains. Reason: DB delays are so frequent that if they did not do this the Swiss rail network would also collapse.

Germany's Liebling has always been the Autobahn, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

This reminds me when my DB broke down on the way to Zurich just past the border and I had to change trains, though I believe in that case it was a swap from broken DB to not-yet-broken DB. The scenery was great so I didn't mind terribly.

Sorry for the pointless post but got to reminiscing.

Yes, people in Germany love complaining about their trains. It makes sense, a decade ago they were way better. For everybody else that's experienced the train systems of other countries, it's still incredibly good.

I think the issue is that for a long long time we were a car nation wearing the coat of a train nation and while the stereotype (and expectation) solidified itself we privatized the railway system, converted many of the Western cities from public transportation focussed to car focussed (and back) and continued to make the car industry the bedrock of a few states' economies.

It's all relative; Irish Rail makes DB look very good, say. I gather the British rail companies are as bad or worse these days.

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