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The story
Deutsche Bahn (DB)’s chronic delays are a well-worn self-deprecating joke abroad too, but a railway journalist’s blog post arguing “that joke isn’t funny anymore” sparked a debate on the Lemmy community c/europe. While some pointed out that Germany ranks dead last among major countries for punctuality, and commuters shared their own experiences of frequent delays, a persistent counterargument held that “cars and planes are late too, so why single out trains?” The discussion also touched on a separate glitch in which DB’s official website was temporarily blocking access from Linux users, highlighting frustration that goes beyond a simple running joke.
“Your ‘Deutsche Bahn joke’ isn’t funny anymore”
Source: jonworth.eu / Original article here
What people said
Then again, cars get delayed by traffic jams way more often than that… yet nobody complains about that.
How many of those trips required a transfer?
'Passengers never complain about a train that doesn't exist, because that train simply isn't there.'
Solution: just run fewer trains (joke)
I wish that were just a joke, but they're actually doing it for real. That's exactly why so much rail infrastructure was lost through the '80s and '90s.
Cars and planes aren't reliable either. Honestly, nothing is reliable.
What a great day!
Sorry, but I honestly find it hard to believe a site would block requests just because the browser/client headers — `sec-ch-ua-platform` or `user-agent` — contain "linux" or don't contain "windows"… Also, I'm browsing the site just fine using Firefox and Chrome on a Linux distro. Mind if I ask how you confirmed it was OS-related?
That was actually a real issue fairly recently. It's fixed now — DB itself admitted that blocking Linux users like that wasn't intended behavior.
A journalist looked into it.
There's a German-language article and an English-language article (both linked).
I ran into the same issue myself when I tried DB's route search a week ago.
Sure, but I've also got stories about long-distance car trips going terribly. Yet there's no running joke about German roads being garbage.
Couldn't agree more! The best sites are ns.nl or nsinternational.nl. Worth using even for trains that don't pass through the Netherlands.
That's exactly why rail advocates rarely blame DB itself — they mostly blame the politicians.
And yet you keep using DB instead of driving.
On my Linux machine, I still get blocked if I search for a future date instead of today's travel.
Compared to how bad DB is, nobody complains about the roads.
'Nobody complains'?
…Wait, what are you talking about?
Background and key points of this discussion
The self-deprecating gag that “German trains are always late” is a familiar bit even in the English-speaking world, but Deutsche Bahn’s (DB) on-time performance has remained poor in recent years, and the data cited in this thread ranks it last among the seven countries compared (58.5%). Opinions in the thread split over whether this is something you can still laugh off as a joke or a genuine, harmful grievance: commuters testified that 30-minute-to-one-hour delays are an everyday occurrence, while others pushed back with “cars and planes are late too” and “the road network is just as bad, people just don’t complain about it.” Another point of discussion was DB’s official website blocking access that appeared to come from Linux — a real glitch that was also reported by overseas media (and has since been fixed). Note that the claim linking the delays to rail-infrastructure cuts in the ’80s and ’90s is one poster’s personal opinion, not verified data.
※This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Lemmy c/europe) thread “Your Deutsche Bahn "joke" is no longer funny.”
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