Die Bahn

This is kind of another German product review. This time I'm reviewing more of a service--the German railways or Deutsche Bahn. My review is sparked by an incident that occured on my way home from Sweden.

Here are some facts about the Deutsche Bahn:
1. They have somehow received a reputation for Pünktlichkeit (punctuality). You can set your clock by German trains, people say. No, you can't. You must have them confused with the Swiss. Usually ICE trains are on time, I would say, but you really can't trust Nahverkehr (the ones that don't go too far). When I lived with Claudia and Roger and took the train every day, I basically had the message memorized. "Meine Damen and Herren am Gleis (pause) 2, bitte beachten Sie, Regional Express 4 von Dortmund nach Aachen (pause) Hbf..." If the train is delayed by 10 minutes or less, they offer no excuse. If it's more, they usually offer the excuse of Verzogerungen im Betrieb (delays in operations), which drives me crazy. I mean, what they are basically saying is that the train will be delayed because there are delays. Just say you're incompetent.

2. As Shane pointed out, there is something called the Deutsche Bahn law. It states that if you expect a train to be late, it will be on time. If you expect the train to be on time, it will be late. This basically means that if you're ever running a little late and could use a five-minute delay, you won't get it. But when you're early and especially if you're for some reason really early, the train will be delayed. I have found this pretty much always to hold true.

3. On the Deutsche Bahn website (which they improved in December to be uglier and harder to use), the local bus schedules are somehow linked. Convenient, right? I can type in my local bus stop and my final destination and it will tell me what bus to take to make it to the train station on time. On time, that is, to watch my train pull away after running off the bus to the platform while incurring the wrath of larger German women who get off buses excruciatingly slowly and do not appreciate attempts to get around them. This is not totally the Bahn's fault--part of the blame rests on the AVV (local transportation authority) which should put plus/minus 5 minutes next to all their bus times (Myth of German punctuality: BUSTED!)

Anyways, on the way back from Sweden, I was on a packed Sunday night train back to Aachen (Friday afternoons and Sunday evenings are the worst time to ride trains around here...half the students in Aachen apparently go home to have their mothers do their laundry on the weekends). We arrived at a stop and after the new passengers boards, we just didn't move. We sat there for a few minutes before we were informed that our train was delayed for the reason of people on the tracks and that the police were already underway to get them off. We sat there for about 20-30 minutes and they repeated the same message once, before saying the dreaded words "Dieser Zug endet hier. Die Strecke ist gesperrt." (This train ends here. The stretch of track is blocked off.) Apparently the people on the tracks got hit. So we all stepped off the train into a rainy evening and waited for the promised "Ersatzverkehr" (replacement transportation--usually they'll send a bus or something). We waited about 40 minutes. A few taxis came, and whenever one appeared, 20 people would run out into the rain towards it. Then, a train came going in the right direction. We all started walking towards it. The train driver stuck her head out the window and looked at us like we were crazy. Someone asked her if the train was going all the way to Aachen and she said yes, of course, like there was no reason for it not to go to Aachen. We finally left the station and then at some point stopped in the middle of nowhere. I saw people running next to the train. Then we started moving again. Finally, we arrived in Aachen at 12:45 am, about 80 minutes after the train was supposed to get there and after all the buses had stopped running. Thanks, Deutsche Bahn.