Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
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@alberich That ought to be a cause for anger, not laughter! But yes, I sort of see the point. (Please also be aware I am German, as well as British)
@jon @alberich
Anger towards people really in charge, yes. But laughter makes the situation easier to bare.
(Hello and thank you to @BahnAnsagen !
)(But actually, I'm often enough angry about missed connections.)
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@jon Delayed German trains can be really annoying, especially when you get stuck somewhere. But I agree, it generally works fine, and there are other trains to choose from.
@jon Although it was a bit annoying when I had to spend half the night helping my sister when she got stuck in Basel one evening, and then having to help her the next day again when she got stuck in Hamburg.
Or the time I spent at a station in rural Sachsen a very hot summer day waiting for a train that just kept getting more and more delayed…
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@jon While I'm still fairly often annoyed at Deutsche Bahn, I feel they handle issues often better than Swedish rail companies. In Sweden, I once saw a conductor and a train driver trying to organise replacement busses at the plattform, as their company didn't do anything
@jon I heard lots of Danes complaining about DSB, but I had some really great experiences with them trying to smooth things out. Granted, Denmark is a lot smaller than Germany
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@jon
Interesting and credible.
A question though. You promote the German Green Party, effectively saying a vote for any other party is a vote against rail investment. Is that true for Die Linke too?@markhburton Die Linke never said much on this. But didn’t damage the railways, that’s true.
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@mariusor ha. Just sit me in a ICE3neo. I’m cheap

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@jon I heard lots of Danes complaining about DSB, but I had some really great experiences with them trying to smooth things out. Granted, Denmark is a lot smaller than Germany
@rainerzufall_le DSB can fail spectacularly as well though!
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@rainerzufall_le DSB can fail spectacularly as well though!
@jon Then I'll have to stop taking trains in Denmark to stay in my honeymoon period
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@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.
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@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.
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@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)
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@odoruhako Yes. Totally this! And fundamentally Deutsche Bahn is *trying* to do the right thing, somehow, still. Just within massive constraints.
@jon @odoruhako big country, long distances, things can get bad. That is just the fact. Not all is DB's fault.
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@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
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@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
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@jon Bravo!
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@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...
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/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...
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@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...
@gunchleoc @samuele963 @odoruhako @jon not sure how that's relevant to this conversation though, however correct it may be
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@jon bitching about DB is the birthplace of AFD … FU all the alman Stinkstiefelz !
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@jon I think it is bit of every nations joke about their railway infrastructure.
ČD - stands for "čekám dlouho" (waiting long) classic here

But after some traveling I don't find them funny anymore.
@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.
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Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.
Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/@jon Mannheim has the best DB Premium Lounge.

Neat post, thank you for the positivity!