Comment by marcyb5st

Yes and no. If you need to go from cities east to cities on the west you need to tunnel a lot and those choke points also make maintenance more tricky because you can't really re-route trains elsewhere without adding hours to the trip. Germany, as you said, it's mostly open ground and so you can go in any direction. Rerouting trains in this setting using viable alternatives for effective maintenance should be easier.

And those longer trips wouldn't even count as delays since they were hopefully announced weeks ahead of schedule and so passengers know it will take longer to get to their destination.