My Deutsche Bahn Nightmare: A Question

It is truly a transportation/train question, then here. But if it is rant or a long complaint then it is best done with Bahn.

Bill, It's difficult to answer your question without having more specific information about the "nightmare" you experienced. Is there any possibility of providing a short summary? I assume you're back home now???

If your rant is going to be about missing a tight connection because of a delayed train... yeah, happens all the time, although Deutsche Bahn still has one of the best on-time records on the continent.

No. This has to do with service - ROTTEN service, and in 1st Class, by employees who couldn't have cared less about us.

Non-existing service in 1st class in a train so packed that people have to be standing in the aisles (even in 1st class) isn't new or a surprise to us frequent travelers of Deutsche Bahn. There was only 1 bath room operating for 400 people? No news either. You made a seat reservation but the carriage didn't exist? Standard procedure. 160°F inside the ICE train where you cannot open a window? Occurs frequently between May and October (no kidding!!). The ACs are of poor quality. DB German Rail was cutting cost to prepare for an IPO in the past 10 years. All no big surprise. But since the people have started to vote left-wing parties the federal government had to react and replace the Bahn CEO. The IPO was postponed to "not before 2020" - and they're now starting to take care of passengers again. But that's a slow and lenghty process and will take - until 2020... ;-)

Andreas - thanks for the info...sadly. I always had such dignified and pleasant trips with DBahn...and A/C LOL! Now I'll just be happy if I get a seat and don't melt ;-) My expectations are usually pretty low; that way, I'm usually ecstatic at how things turn out!

"160°F inside the ICE train where you cannot open a window? Occurs frequently between May and October (no kidding!!). The ACs are of poor quality." Happened to me once. I can't figure, it was only 20-23 C outside, but about 35 inside. At worst, if the AC is broken, shouldn't it merely equilibrate the outside and inside temperatures?

Yikes. I will be taking the six (?) hour trip between Munich and Berlin very soon. Any suggestions on how to ensure I get a seat, don't melt, or otherwise suffer the entire time?

And I thought non-existant first-class carriages and broken AC only happened in Italy.

Why is it sudden bash Bahn? We spent this past Christmas week in Germany. With all of the snow and especially ice nothing was on schedule and missed every connect especially frustration on one day with four connections. At every missed connection the staff was extremely helpful in pointing us to the next connection and suggested reroutes to make up some of the lost time. Obviously no AC problems - the heat was always on - but the staff, especially the conductors, could not have been more helpful. Must have been the holiday season 'cause everyone, even the passengers, were great.

(pointing at Bill) He started it! :)

LOL! Bill, I want to know what happened...'cause I'm snoopy. Lower-case 's' snoopy.

Yes, inquiring minds want to know!

It's like on TripAdvisor and similar pages. You only hear and read about the 5% that went wrong and not about the 95% that went right. In 10 years of using DB frequently (2-6 times per month) for business I've had maybe 2 or 3 rides in total that were just really bad. I did experience that AC issue in summer (the conductor kept telling people to either call the CEO of DB - or Siemens, who constructed the train), did board a train that just didn't carry my carriage and therefore ended up standing in 1st class for a two hours ride... and I had a couple of pretty bad delays (over 45 minutes late that is...).

I'd be thrilled to have something even approaching DB in the US.

So may I assume that I can go into detail about everything that happened to us here in the transporation section? If so, then I will do so asap. We are moving into a new place and I haven't been online much lately. Thanks, B~

You do not need permission. Post what you wish to say and if the Webmaster finds it inappropriate it may not last. But it would have to be pretty far off the map for that to happen.