Comment by 101008
1 day ago
I know the author mentioned this, but I just got nervous imagining this as a tourist who doesn't speak German at all. This shouldn't be like this. Why they don't help at all?
It's also funny considering how here in South America we look at Germany trains (and Switzerland trains) as always on time, and the best train system, etc. But I am sure if this happens here it would be on the cover of newspapers.
It's also funny considering how here in South America we look at Germany trains (and Switzerland trains)
That's very outdated, DB has been terrible for a long time though. Switzerland is still the best though. Here are some stats for 2025:
https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped
Since you have to scroll down quite a bit to get the list of most reliable European trains (with percentage on time):
1. Switzerland 97.8%
2. The Netherlands 93.9%
3. Belgium 88.6%
4. Austria 82.2%
5. France 79.7%
6. Italy 62.0%
7. Germany 58.5%
(Not sure why these are the only countries in the list.)
After living in Italy for a few years - if you're doing worse than Italy with your train schedule it's time to reflect hard.
Germany and Italy should gang up together to make the trains run on time and... wait a minute.
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As per my other comment, Swiss trains (especially SBB) are not as pleasant as they get credit for. I get a lot that "you know, in other countries it's much worse", and it reminds me of software hosting, where it was normal in the past to be offline occasionally. Then Google et al. came and showed that much more reliability is possible with good engineering. I think there would be a lot of room for improvement.
I disagree. Swiss trains are a delight. They even have trains going up mountains (although some of those cost extra). Public transit in Switzerland was extremely reliable when I was there, and also according to official statistics.
Unlike other commenters, I agree that there are some (arguably significant) things to complain about. The first one is price - tickets are quite expensive. I frequently travel Zurich HB -> Lugano. This is 200km and costs a whopping 120+ CHF round trip. Zurich -> Geneva, Zurich Bern are similarly expensive. However, it's a bit hard to fault them as Switzerland is an expensive country and perhaps the high prices keep the service good.
What I am less able to excuse them for is capacity issues, especially on weekend and Friday trains on popular routes in the Summer. That Zurich Lugano train is packed to the gills most weekends during the summer such that it's standing room only for most of the 2 hour ride. They need to add more trains or at least more cars.
Reliability is not something to complain about. The trains are punctual, that's for sure.
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Complaining about Swiss trains is beyond me.
Keep in mind that a train in Germany counts as one-time if it is less than 6 minutes late. In Switzerland, it's 3 minutes.
Also in Germany, a train that did not even arrive does not count as too late.
There is also a concept of the "Pofalla-Wende", which is when a train is so late that it just does a 180 and drives back, to mitigate that the delay doesn't carry over to the train's next route. Of course, that means that it skips the stations at the end of the route.
Experienced that a few months ago. Next time I‘ll be tempted to pull the emergency brake which will cost them at least half an hour to get the train going again. Or so I have been told.
Canada: 30% on-time
https://media.viarail.ca/en/press-releases/2025/q1-2025-time...
That does not make Germany look any better but I find the "percentage on time" not very useful compared to the "years of delay" metric. And arguable a average/median delay per train would be better? Also some delay volatility data would be interesting.
If you look at France for example, 80% of trains are not punctual but the "total delays" is actually on the low range, France being on the large side with lots of lines, I would say that it shows that the delays (20% of the time) are actual shorts.
I gather that this is an average of all trains. In Italy, the high velocity train are quite punctual, but the slow regional trains drag the average down.
In Germany in 2025 it got worse with only 55% of trains being on time (defined very generously as being less than 6 minutes late).
I find this figure absolutely baffling. How can you run a train system with half of all trains being late?
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The less complex your train network, the easier it is to ensure trains are on time. France, Italy and Germany possibly have larger networks than Switzerland.
Then split your network into segments you can handle. Switzerland receives lots of international trains. Not only that; it has a lot of rail companies, serves even tiny villages, and has the highest use per capita in Europe. Size of the network is a lame excuse. German trains used to be fine. Now they're a disaster.
Switzerland has all public transport synchronized across the country. In any of the countries you mentioned they don’t even gave synchronized public transport at city level.
The swiss have a more challenging geography and weather than Germany.
They also spend far more per capita on their train system.
All that and afaik they still manage to connect all important places.
No, Swiss SBB is just generally very competent and has insane amount of traffic in comparison to any European rail.
Except that The Netherlands has the busiest rail network in Europe [1] and still manages to be second in that list.
[1] https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/acm-rail-monitor-netherla...
Talk about a very appropriate domain name lol
I recently moved to the Netherlands to study, and I experience that a lot. Despite almost all official information everywhere being written in both Dutch and English, in-train announcements are only done in Dutch. I have to constantly listen to the announcements and try to understand based off their vibe if they sound like something critical or not.
Dutch announcements in the Netherlands. Fancy that. Almost like it's the national language or something.
The Netherlands is in the EU. English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, even after the UK left, because it is by far the most common second language. Nearly half of the people in the EU can speak it.
In Northern Europe the percentage is even higher. In the Netherlands there are almost as many people who speak it as there are Dutch speakers.
Taking into account people from other EU countries who are there on business plus tourists there is a good chance that if only one language was to be used for train announcements more people on the train would understand if it was in English then if it was in Dutch.
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Yes, I'm obviously not mad with them using their own language, and I am studying it since I live there. But it's in the EU, and there is a lot of international tourists on the train, who shouldn't be expected to learn the national language of every country they visit just to navigate it.
Yep, only semi-consistent exception is that Amsterdam Central & Schiphol are usually also announced in english. Including delays related to these stations.
But, for example, Rotterdam or Utrecht are already a lot less likely to be announced in english.
I was once in a train that announced Schiphol in 5 languages. That's how you announce an international airport.
In Switzerland, the major train lines announce in English (as well as German and French). Minor train lines often only announce in the local language.
Honestly, I don't see the problem. As a tourist, you have to be prepared with apps, or you can ask someone for help. Happens all the time, and most people are happy to help.
Someone living here needs to learn the local language.
Since you moved to Netherlands is understandable they speak Dutch. You should consider learning it off you want to get by in the society.
German trains, as recently as the 90s, were phenomenal, and integrated superbly with the Swiss and others. It is in the 21st century that Germany has gone off the rails.
In other words: it's going downhill ever since the DB was privatized.
DB is not privatized. It is 100% owned by the state.
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"Off the rails" hehe
The Netherlands has a very similar problem: the train system was privatized in the late 90s/early 2000s and has been going downhill since the 2010s or so. While it's still better than Deutsche Bahn, it's just so much worse compared to how it used to be.
The Dutch train system is not privatised, the government owns 100% of both the tracks and the main carrier: the NS.
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Dutch trains aren't as perfect as the Swiss, but still far, far, better than German trains. I think it was about 20 years ago when NS was ridiculed because of nonsense delays caused by leaves on the track (who would possibly expect that in the autumn?). I think they're better now. And intercity trains leaving every 10 minutes (between Amsterdam and Utrecht) helps a lot.
German trains were great twenty years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if things went haywire after lockdown. Many things did. It gave people a licence not to work and introduced a sloppiness into everything.
I'm fairly certain it was before that, as someone living in The Netherlands we'd always get warned to make sure there was at least 30-60 minute transit time between each stop in Germany when travelling international, as the expectation was that the train would be (extremely) late.
This was already the case around 2015.
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Trains are still great. Especially the newer generation ICEs are beautiful trains and very comfortable.
Just don't count on them that they bring you to your destination in a timely manner.
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> we look at Germany trains (and Switzerland trains) as always on time
When taking an international train from Germany to Switzerland, don't count on it that it will run through to the final destination.
SBB (Swiss National Railways) started to block German trains if their delay is more than 15 minutes (so, basically every DB train) and won't allow the train on their network.
This is only peripherically educational. Constantly delayed DB trains completely fouled up the scheduling on the extremely dense Swiss network. So they just won't allow it anymore.
On a sidenote: In 2024 SBB trains were 93.2% punctual. Connectivity punctuality (where you have to catch a connecting train) was 98.7%. A train is counted as punctual if the delay is less than 3 minutes (half the German figure).
German trains do typically announce in English. If they don't, that's the exception. Just ask around. Most people here speak English and will be able to repeat what was said, especially if they're under 40 or so.
> Most people here speak English
Germany is the country where I found the highest number of people not being able to speak English, even people working in accomodation!
French people probably know English but they refuse to speak it; Italians don't know English that well, but they try their best using rolling R's and gestures.
(I'm a bit ironic)
I've learned they very quickly switch to English if you speak to them in German :)
English people can speak Italian though, just add a vowel-a on-a every-a word-a
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Announcements in English aren't done for every station. Usually only for central stations and airports.
Funny thing, but the Swiss are looking at banning DB trains because they are never on time and messes up Switzerland’s public transport schedule.
I thought they already rejected delayed trains. Trains that are on time are still allowed. But I'd love to see Switzerland take over some of those international connections.
> But I'd love to see Switzerland take over some of those international connections.
The Giruno EMUs of the SBB serving the Eurocity from Hamburg to Basel are having technical malfunctions causing delays & aborted trainrides for the last few weeks.
The Eurocity(Express) Zurich-Munich is the most delayed long-distance train route in Germany. Most of the German route is only single-tracked and overcrowded.
I did learn German at school but it didn't help much when trying to get to Munich airport last year. I could understand what was going on with the cancelled trains at the station I boarded at, but the train I did catch end up tipping us all out after a few stops.
I could make out a bit of what the driver said, but not enough to be sure of the detail, which is what really mattered. I expected to miss my flight, but just made it in the end.
> Germany trains (and Switzerland trains) as always on time, and the best train system, etc
It's true of Switzerland and probably Austria. Germany is famous for having infrastructure issues that will take some time to resolve.
Eg see https://chuuchuu.com/2025wrapped for some stats
I'm a heavy public transport user in Switzerland, and even though it's almost a meme how reliable the trains are, reality is different. Yes, they operate in a way that make the stats look good (x% on time), but they take tradeoff to get there. E.g. they won't await connections if another train is a few minutes late. So you might have to wait for 30 minutes for the next one, or even longer if you're unlucky. And there's the occasional big incident, where you get stuck for several hours. I missed flights that way, even though planning in 3 hours of buffer. There is zero compensation in such cases as long as they bring you to your destination on the same day. Plus, several trains are regularly way too crowded.
They changed the policy maybe 5-years ago about a train waiting for a late train to come in because they found that it added additional delays to the entire system. I prefer the new way.
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In my experience, they do sometimes still wait (at least that was the case for a few trips with delays last summer).
(And tbf I'm ok waiting 30min, with Taktfahrplan how much you wait is usually max 1h and often much shorter, my experience in other countries is often hours of delays in case of trouble)
Swiss trains are very civilized. On an ordinary intercity train can sit at a table with a white tablecloth and have a beer or wine and a proper dinner. It really makes the time fly by. The SBB also has merch store with their own line of watches.
> I know the author mentioned this, but I just got nervous imagining this as a tourist who doesn't speak German at all. This shouldn't be like this. Why they don't help at all?
How much help does your home country give to German tourists who don't speak English?
> Germany trains (and Switzerland trains)
Other commenters have already set the record straight, pointing out that these are clearly not in the same cluster.
See also https://www.thelocal.de/20250430/switzerland-suspends-deutsc...
Pay-walled, but the title says it all: "Switzerland suspends Deutsche Bahn trains due to chronic delays". DB is so unreliable that it impacts the networks of neighboring countries.
It's not so bad, with luck you'll eventually end up at a station outside of Germany.
Swiss trains are always on time. I've heard they've start to refuse delayed German trains entry to the country because their delays disrupt the system too much. The Swiss train system is excellent. The German train system is a joke.
Germany had a great train system but Germany also has a big automobile industry that spends a lot of money on lobbying.
In the end of the 90s with neoliberalism being very popular, it was decided to privatize the trains. The effect was only minimal investments in the infrastructure and a gradual rotting away of the train network. Now we a reaping what we have sown.
The enshitification of the German trains was done on purpose so they don't compete with cars.
> Why they don't help at all?
If it's anything like the UK, the staff have incredibly secure jobs and recently secured some good changes to their working conditions/pay. It's probably not in their contract to announce in other languages, so they do exactly what their contract says
Idk how it is in Germany but my wife is currently trying to became a train driver in France and there are far more requirements that what you would imagine.
Even if the job is actually opened to basically everyone (and that’s pretty nice), you have to be in perfect physical and psychological shape with pretty strict tests, you have to be intellectually apt enough to follow the training which is pretty intense. You have to accept work conditions such as not knowing your work hours until the day before. You have to accept sleeping who knows where at least 2 times a week. You have to accept having only one weekend off per month.
So what happens is that when you have that much filters and you still want to hire train drivers, you can’t afford to expect your drivers to know another language on top of all of the rest.
Nothing is perfect but living in the UK after living in France, I have now a lot more love for SNCF than I used too.
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I have found station and train staff in the UK to be very friendly and helpful.
They do have very good pay (drivers can earn as much as some airline pilots) and a very good pension scheme on top of that.
I wish I could say the same. UK trains are so unreliable and expensive I barely ever use them.
drivers have amazingly good pay compared to say bus drivers, but station staff and on board staff don’t.
I'd reverse the question ask why Germany (or any other country where English is not an official language, and does not majorly rely on tourism for income) would provide any public information in English? Commercial services can choose to do so a matter of self interest, but why would state financed services?
Because the State wants to attract well educated international workers to fix it's failing economy?
Problem is that failing to communicate will lead to huge productivity holes, so to "fix it", either the natives need to learn a non native language or the incoming immigrants need to learn the native language..
So, attracting the international workforce to come Germany vs being able to fully utilise them are completely different ballparks..
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A "well educated" international worker willing to relocate in Germany would probably learn the language.
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You're really wondering why a state-funded service would consider the needs of tourists?
Yes. AFAICT, catering to the needs of tourists ranks very low among German voter priorities.
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I do not see the relation, mate.
English is the most common lingua franca.