Post

Graham Stark
@graham.loadingreadyrun.com

The German train system (DBahn) is hilarious because you’ll get an email like: “Hello customer, There has been a change to your planned schedule. It’s fucked. You can’t do it now. It’s not possible. We won’t say why. Figure your shit out yourself. Sincerely, Deutsche Bahn” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

10 reposts205 likes

Graham Stark
@graham.loadingreadyrun.com

Importantly, you CAN just… get onto another train and they’ll scan your ticket and tut their tongue as if to say, “oh yeah, that train got fucked, huh?” and that’ll be all you need to do. So that part is good at least.

Adrian Speed
@adrianspeed.bsky.social

As an English person dealing with English person train problems I found it astounding Germans envied our trains for their reliability and cleanliness. It feels like Germany decided to focus all possible inefficiency in one public service.

El Strato
@elstrato.bsky.social

You sure are. Best I ever heard was something like "we are now that much delayed, that we must go on in the other direction from the next station on, you need to get to another train. Before you ask. I don't know who's "brilliant" idea that was"... Our sarcasm is better than our trains I swear

Jim Lapage 🇨🇦
@jimtsf.bsky.social

Man I tried like 8 times to book a ticket to Essen after the con. They kept rejecting my payment with a nondescript error. I called my credit card company and they told me DBahn wasn't even attempting the payment. They did accept it when I paid through paypal and selected my credit card though. 🤷‍♂️

Propriety
@proprietous.bsky.social

Meanwhile in Japan, you get: "Everyone: The 7:18 train from Takadanobaba was attacked by twenty-six wild boars There will be a 45 second delay We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and will prostrate ourselves before you to beg for your forgiveness Thank you for riding"

Maltedeinesamtes
@wonderdoc.bsky.social

DB also carries their incompetence over into neighbouring countries. A friend interned for DB cargo Netherlands. His main task while there? -Making a map with every track and station they have/service in NL. He found at least a dozen stations of those that were missing from their system...

anyguymtg.bsky.social
@anyguymtg.bsky.social

You'll never guess why DB is in that bad state: Privatization. The state owned railway was privatized in the 90s by the conservatives & market liberals, to make the deficient company profitable. This led to (no surprise) higher prices and worse service. (shortened story, IRL more complex than that)

But Thou Mustelid
@rewhan.bsky.social

So much so, I'm almost certain somewhere in the German language is a fourteen syllable compound noun describing 'the sensation of resigned disappointment resulting from a train delay because somebody somewhere did something foolish, again.'

swordwave
@sword-wave.bsky.social

Thats the fun thing about compound nouns. They don't need to exist "somewhere in the language", you can just combine them. Just like you wrote it out in English just with fewer spaces