Dhe Deutsche Bahn is certainly better than its reputation – because it can hardly be worse. This is not due to articles like this one, no, some pejoratives are probably the fault of the railways themselves. The proud battle cry “Everyone is talking about the weather. We don’t” has long since faded away – as soon as it storms, freezes or scorches, the railways have to stop their rail traffic until further notice. Delays are the order of the day, the apology announcements – “Delay due to a delayed train ahead” – are only acknowledged by passengers who are used to grief with a mild rattle.
How bad the reputation has become I didn’t realize until I experienced it myself and, admittedly, shamelessly benefited from it. It was a rainy Sunday afternoon at the train station in Nienburg (Weser) where the ICE on its way north came to an unscheduled standstill. This means that the train driver even had to reverse in order to reach the platform he had just passed. According to the announcement, the route in front of us was completely closed “indefinitely”. The justification sounded less poetic: “Personal injury”. That didn’t bode well. The permission that one could now even leave the train “to get some fresh air on the platform” raised the suspicion that the indefinite time would have to be calculated in hours. And when I also had to watch how the train driver climbed out of his cab and looked around furtively, my suspicion became a certainty: This could take a while.