Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.

[rainerzufall_le@mastodon.social]

@jon Then I'll have to stop taking trains in Denmark to stay in my honeymoon period

[feliz@norden.social]

@jon As a German, I’d like to say thank you! I’m fed up too with all this constant and ritualistic drivel about how Deutsche Bahn is supposedly always unreliable. It has somehow become a clichéd outrage culture in Germany: people moan about the railway to foster a sense of community. This shared indignation is used in a somehow masochistic way for social bonds or a sense of identity.

If booked in good time and planned sensibly, it's possible to travel with DB really cheaply and comfortably.

[torstentorsten@social.tchncs.de]

@jon Hot take: bashing of public train systems (and other public goods like schools) is a means of denouncing public goods in the general view. Thus making it easier to knock them off, or privatize them. Many comedians love to be complicit in this, as such jokes are easy prey.

[hiiamfrompoland@troet.cafe]

@jon Indeed. I find it also, well, frustrating to hear snobbiness regarding railway from my fellow polish countryman, where, apart from Pendolino on Kraków-Gdynia connection, most of the railway is so so.

Particularly regional trains stand out in Germany, where, again, in Poland most of the province has to rely on a car - even though the tracks are there.

With DB you may get some adventures - but you will get where you need to. Eventually

(Today Berlin-Paris on time)

[fridrich@tooting.ch]

@jon @odoruhako big country, long distances, things can get bad. That is just the fact. Not all is DB's fault.

[perlplayer@mastodon.social]

@jon i know the DB from the 90s, and compared to that the DB is as drought piece of junk. Even in other countries is worse. I'm not tired to complain about this

[corentin@masto.bike]

@jon What surprises me the most about your post is that you were able to find enough mobile signal in Germany to send it tbh

[hikingdude@mastodon.social]

@jon Bravo!

[gunchleoc@mastodon.scot]

@samuele963 @mgleadow @odoruhako @jon Also, climate change is already hitting the British Railway system, e.g. with the west coast lines being flooded in the north, or storms making it too dangerous for trains to go, or lightning hitting switching stations...

[ckd@mas.to]

@jon

I just went to Stockholm from Hamburg, and back. No problems in Sweden and Denmark, 7 hours in Germany on the way up, 2 hours on the way back. On only 150km of the trip which ran on German tracks.

Sorry, but your one experience is hardly statistical proof, but the current 53% rate of trains on time (which does not even include canceled trains) speaks volumes.

We're not so much cracking jokes about Deutsche Bahn anymore. Deutsche Bahn IS the joke...

[mgleadow@mastodon.green]

@gunchleoc @samuele963 @odoruhako @jon not sure how that's relevant to this conversation though, however correct it may be

[random_industries@mastodon.social]

@jon bitching about DB is the birthplace of AFD … FU all the alman Stinkstiefelz !

[muddle@infosec.exchange]

@plactagonic @jon We had the same kind of joke in Ireland when CIE ran both buses and trains: we used to call it Cycling Is Easier. Probably universal, as you say.

[cyrevolt@mastodon.social]

@jon Mannheim has the best DB Premium Lounge.
Neat post, thank you for the positivity!

[gufo@mastodon.nu]

@jon I’ll contend that my two worst delays thus far have both involved German railways. Then again both of them were on a southbound SJ EuroNight…

Padborg/Hamburg is a serious single-point-of-failure for us northerners. Once in Hamburg, the network opens up and works its magic.

[ohweh@climatejustice.social]

@jon

"Ultimately any German who has ever voted for any party other than the Grüne also deserves what they get." --> Correct!

[torf@c.im]

@jon Come on. I have been travelling by railways in 8 different countries, including Germany, and no one of it has its railway even closely so totally screwed up as DB. I recall only one travel with DB which ran without any issues (my most recent travel should have been merely one hour in Bavaria a few days ago, and lo and behold, it has become two hours because of another DB failure). So no, I will mock it, laugh on it, and maybe even finally go make a driver license for travels over Germany, because absolutely no other country I ever lived in or merely visited incites me so much to buy a freaking fossil fuel car and forget about this nightmare ones and forever. And yes, I voted for Grüne when I had a chance to.

[carl@chaos.social]

@jon I remember how the deutsche bahn used to be. Compared to that, the DB is totally ridiculous today.

[hatetsu@mastodon.com.pl]

@jon @hiiamfrompoland "Seldom" is maybe not appropriate anymore, at least when it comes to PKPIC. Still, there is some ways to go before infrastructure, rolling stock availability, ticketing rules and regional governments catch up with the resources now being invested into planning a proper Takt network.

As for the "who", I think we have someone from that side, or relatively close to it, here on fedi, but I'm tactful enough to not bother them

[telebrief@ruhr.social]

@jon Bit odd to blame Schröder’s #SPD while giving the Greens a free pass. They were part of the federal government from 1998 to 2005. DB Netz investment didn’t simply rise under Red-Green either, and road infrastructure still received more investment than rail. Whatever the party, none of them has managed to make public transport genuinely fit for the future.