Every time I travel with Deutsche Bahn.. 🚄
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@Gina Traveling with Deutsche Bahn and complaining about it is our age-old traditional rite of passage, you can pick up your German passport at the counter
@moritz Yay, jetzt bin ich auch eine Brezel! 🥨🇩🇪
@Gina Fitting boost from @janl pretty much at same time 😆 https://mastodon.social/@xavierdatatech/116025550555588698
@Gina Idk, last year we needed to take the train from Hamburg to Rostock, and it went really well, both ways, no significant delays. One connection was overfilled, but the DB app warned us. All in all, quite passable. And I'm Swiss, so my expectations are high.
No but seriously, my German friends of the #fediverse, what is up with DB always being late??? 🇩🇪
Sincerely,
A very bored Gina who has been stuck in Osnabrück for over an hour now.
@Gina Careful there! If you complain about DB three times in a row, you'll be handed German citizenship – whether you want it or not.
@Gina I haven’t experienced the DB myself in over 45 years, but it is often the butt of jokes on “Jetlag the Game.”
When the DB is delayed the players will say they have been “Deutsch Bahned”.
Gute und schnelle Reise!
@Gina our, mostly center right to right, governments of the last decades underinvested into the train infrastructure for decades. Like at least since the privatisation of the DB in the 90, maybe longer. Now the rails, switches, overhead lines, bridges and especially the signal boxes all need maintenance. They now started doing more serious maintenance work on some lines but that is impacting the timetable as well.
@Gina
Hi Gina, we've all been there, and we're deeply sorry 🙏
Deutsche Bahn has been privatized (with the promise of efficiency...) and held by the state ever since. From being an essential service for all citizens, it is now expected to "make profit" and from there, things got worse.
What doesn't really make it better: it's seen as competition to German car makers, and thus it's politically toxic to invest in it.
@Gina I had an delay of 10h, while traveling to FOSDEM because of Deutsche Bahn. I needed to take 5 trains and one bus, instead of one train.
@thomasmarangoni 10h, I would have had a meltdown 🫠🫠
@Gina, if you've got some time to waste, perhaps the pain shared in this talk might make you feel a little bit better:
https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/CHB7UJ-hackertrain-to-fosdem-2026/
What do you expect for a railway system which often runs above 100 % rated capacity and has been financially neglected for a long time?
@Gina maybe they are trying to imitate the french SNCF 😅
@tcit Oh, die DB hat tatsächlich eine ganz eigene Zeitrechnung! Vielleicht sollten wir @wannkommtbahn.de mal zur Zeitreise einladen, um die Züge pünktlich zu machen! ⏳😂
@Gina They looked at the British Rails and thought oh, what a good Idea. In the meanwhile the British looked at the previous German Rail system and said. Oh we made a mistake we need to go back. In the Meantime the private "Investors" found some corrupt people to put in charge and the Germans didn't want to break the Rules. Again.
@Toasterson @Gina Brit who has travelled on DB as well as the British post-privatization network here: this is EXACTLY right. The UK privatization was made attractive to investors by skimping on maintenance for a few years (to offer them cash inducements once they bought the pig in a poke). Said investors turned their noses up at the resulting sickly porker and stayed away. Upshot: DB now has a huge backlog of technical debt.
@Toasterson @Gina Most of the British railway operators are European national carriers.
@Gina Have you ever tried Lufthansa?
Well, the short answer is: efficiency.
There is almost no slack in the system, so whenever anything happens, you get cascading failures.
@deshipu ok but you'd think they could anticipate that better, considering Germany's reputation on engineering. The Dutch NS aren't great either, but still a lot better than DB.
@Gina @deshipu When I'm traveling to Germany I buy a ticket at DB instead of NS Internationaal. Then there's more to choose, good and quick payback when delayed, but above all I can find quickly what the best travel options are instead of needing to go to the Service on the Station.
(My son lives in Ehingen (Donau) and I live in Driebergen near Utrecht)
@Gina It's a trade-off. Someone made the decision that austerity is more important than the system actually working. And yes, overall it costs more, because all those failures are costly, but you can't blame them for unpredictable random events, can you?