Return of the Bahnsinn (original) (raw)
footpad perplexed
December 20 2010, 18:03
Listens: ought to be the Benny Hill theme
So, I'm sitting in this long-distance train which is currently running about an hour late. Fair enough; the weather's bad for trains. I chose this train specifically because it gets me from Cologne to Basel, into the reasonably-safe hands of the Swiss rail system, without the need to make train connections which the Deutsche Bahn is pretty much guaranteed to miss.
The Deutsche Bahn, having woefully under-invested in rolling stock in order to save money in the hopes of getting privatised, is often reduced to splitting its long-distance services in half. This is such a truncated service.
The final comedy comes when the train conductor comes on the PA system and announces that the train is filled beyond its legal capacity. Would people please, he asks with an increasingly pleading note in his voice, volunteer to leave the train and take a later service so that the train can depart?
Incredulous laughter breaks out all through the carriage.
I laugh too, because to me the Deutsche Bahn still counts as a fairly good rail service. Just you wait, you poor buggers, until your government actually manages to privatise your trains. Five years after that, you'll find nothing to laugh about at all.