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2026-09-28 20:37:18

Jon Worth

jon@gruene.social

Damn I am tired of people laughing about Deutsche Bahn.

Travel in many other places in Europe and you will discover Germany is trying to do many things right with its railways. A quick blog post / rant from me:
https://jonworth.eu/your-deutsche-bahn-joke-is-no-longer-fu/

#CrossBorderRail

2026-09-28 20:46:01

Rainer Zufall

rainerzufall_le@mastodon.social

@jon While I'm still fairly often annoyed at Deutsche Bahn, I feel they handle issues often better than Swedish rail companies. In Sweden, I once saw a conductor and a train driver trying to organise replacement busses at the plattform, as their company didn't do anything

2026-09-28 20:54:05

crab

operand@todon.nl

@jon a lot of these points you make here resonate with me quite strongly. i feel like when i was younger there were a lot of jokes about the SNCB to a similar effect and yet ive personally always had the impression that... the system works pretty well. if you take a longer train journey theres a good chance you'll have some delay or miss some connection but you'll almost always get to where you're going.

(of course, Belgium is much smaller than Germany so it's very different in terms of rail)

2026-09-28 20:54:34

alberich

alberich@social.tchncs.de

@jon Thank you for this crossborder perspective. I think we try to laugh because the sense of loss is so strong for anyone who remembers (correctly or not) DB as a point of pride.

2026-09-28 21:07:33

Mark Burton

markhburton@mstdn.social

@jon
Interesting and credible.
A question though. You promote the German Green Party, effectively saying a vote for any other party is a vote against rail investment. Is that true for Die Linke too?

2026-09-28 21:13:46

marius

mariusor@metalhead.club

Oh noes, @jon got bought by Big Bahn. :P

2026-09-28 21:34:18

Torsten Torsten

torstentorsten@social.tchncs.de

@jon Hot take: bashing of public train systems (and other public goods like schools) is a means of denouncing public goods in the general view. Thus making it easier to knock them off, or privatize them. Many comedians love to be complicit in this, as such jokes are easy prey.

2026-09-28 21:39:05

hiiamfrompoland

hiiamfrompoland@troet.cafe

@jon Indeed. I find it also, well, frustrating to hear snobbiness regarding railway from my fellow polish countryman, where, apart from Pendolino on Kraków-Gdynia connection, most of the railway is so so.

Particularly regional trains stand out in Germany, where, again, in Poland most of the province has to rely on a car - even though the tracks are there.

With DB you may get some adventures - but you will get where you need to. Eventually

(Today Berlin-Paris on time)

2026-09-28 21:48:00

Corentin

corentin@masto.bike

@jon What surprises me the most about your post is that you were able to find enough mobile signal in Germany to send it tbh

2026-09-28 21:56:09

Franz Graf

hikingdude@mastodon.social

@jon Bravo!

2026-09-28 22:02:05

Christian Klüber-Demir 🏈

ckd@mas.to

@jon

I just went to Stockholm from Hamburg, and back. No problems in Sweden and Denmark, 7 hours in Germany on the way up, 2 hours on the way back. On only 150km of the trip which ran on German tracks.

Sorry, but your one experience is hardly statistical proof, but the current 53% rate of trains on time (which does not even include canceled trains) speaks volumes.

We're not so much cracking jokes about Deutsche Bahn anymore. Deutsche Bahn IS the joke...

2026-09-28 22:26:20

지지 ᚠד (Jiji Freya Daniel) 🐢✨🧡

CyReVolt@mastodon.social

@jon Mannheim has the best DB Premium Lounge. :D
Neat post, thank you for the positivity! :)

2026-09-28 23:32:29

Urwumpe

urwumpe@hessen.social

@jon Just one small nitpick: You placed Schröder to "the third way" which translates to "Der dritte Weg", which is a neo-nazi party.

In German coordinates, he is of course social-democratic party, more specific the neoliberal Seeheimer circle and his party just identified itself as part of the "new center" in its election campaign.

Actually, the real disaster was the chaotic privatization by the Kohl government in the 1990s.

2026-09-29 00:01:57

badumtss@framapiaf.org

@jon yep, but the experience is still tiring if you rely on trains for anything else than leisure.
The joke here in the south is that the hardest part of the trip from Tübingen to Berlin are the first 4 hours to get to Stuttgart (40 km away)...
And honestly, we would love to stop making the joke, but then we'd really need to experience it otherwise on days where it matters to be on time. Like every day we're not on vacation.

But yeah, the rest of the world is worse off, so let's enjoy...

2026-09-29 02:29:36

kdieter

kdieter@machteburch.social

@jon interesting view. I had always thought that I buy a ticket which gets me from a to b. then Bahn decided that going from a to b at different times, must be different products, "Zugbindung" for which they can charge differently.
The impact of them failing to live up to their own standards on my life is in no way connected to the problems they have to solve. I could empathize. Since being lied to that the train I was just on had only 59 minutes delay while in fact it had more than 1h I wont.

2026-09-29 05:59:42

Alexander Goeres 𒀯

jabgoe2089@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Jon Worth you are completely out of your mind if you try to associate schröder with this party "der dritte weg"

2026-09-29 09:49:28

Kerplunk

Kerplunk@mastodon.scot

@jon

residents who need to get to work on time do not laugh about German Railway.

Whenever possible they drive

because being late can get you sacked.

Punctuality of German trains has improved because when trains will be late for sure they are cancelled without warning.

Trains that do not run can not be late, aim 10% improvement equals 10% more cancellations leaving passengers stranded, often WITHOUT any sane alternative,l let alone an alternative route.

2026-09-29 09:58:54

Merovius

Merovius@chaos.social

@jon @rami I agree, but it also is a bit glaring to me, that Switzerland is missing from the comparison

2026-09-29 12:24:42

Diego Torres

dtorres@mstdn.social

@jon FYI: The link https://collections.fes.de in your update is broken.

It’s so comically german that it breaks just because you (or your CMS) added “?ref=jonworth.eu”

2026-09-29 12:30:03

Ember

mbr@blahaj.zone

@jon@gruene.social congratulations, you made one trip and didn't have to rely on punctuality twice per day in 5 days a week and everything worked out. I also had trips with no delays because I took ICEs and not commuter trains.

2026-09-29 23:03:25

Sebastian Gfeller

sebug@hachyderm.io

@jon @lars if I go to Germany I take the train, and the few times I went the last few years I could always take the (sometimes hours-long) delays in stride, because hey at least it‘s still possible to travel there via train, and it‘s not my country. But shouldn’t people be able to expect more? Switzerland is still doing kind of okay with delays (easier because it‘s a small country), and still I am complaining, a lot, about their lack of plan for the western part of the country. We need enormous and smart investments in infrastructure so the car people at least consider taking the train if we want to get anywhere climate wise, and yes of course there‘s many more people going way farther than 30 years ago, but let‘s not let the politicians who neglected to continuously invest off the hook.

2026-09-30 15:05:11

patrislav ♾️ #RIPNatenom

patrislav@chaos.social

@jon Thank you for this post, I agree with almost everything. I just can't see how Wissing was any better (i.e. any less petrol-headed) than his predecessors.

We must not forget that on his watch the sectoral targets were abolished, which was the last available leverage for damage control in the transport sector. When we see the DB being starved while billions are getting p*ssed away for Tankrabatt and new motorways, it is only possible because of Wissing's legacy.

2026-10-01 09:25:33

ghosts in the silicon ▒

0@corteximplant.com

@jon contrast that with the acquaintance that came back from Sweden and immediately had a 30+ minute delay with Deutsche Bahn.
your post sounds like a "worked for me, stop whining". we ghosts accumulate an impressive amount of delays and train cancellations on routes with no good alternatives each year

2026-10-01 09:32:39

sam :neocat_box:

sam@shonk.sam.ax

@jon@gruene.social I am not going to stop laughing at the idiocy of the current situation just because "other places have it worse". Getting stuck overnight in a random unmanned station in a small city because the ICE can’t continue, having multiple trains in a row cancelled and nearly passing out by having to travel in cattle-class for 4 hours, etc etc etc.

2026-10-01 09:39:00

Jon Worth

jon@gruene.social

Tip when replying to this if you’ve never engaged with my work before: researching railways is my job.

I’ve spent years dealing with these problems.

I might be wrong, but I’m not ill informed.

And I’m most definitely not drawing conclusions from just 1 trip.