Erratic Deutsche Bahn services make our commutes a misery. Luckily, their meaningless announcements are an art form
My favourite excuse is an expression that might one day be emblematic of contemporary Germany. I hear Deutsche Bahn wants staff to stop using it, but it can’t banish it from our minds. Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf – “operational delays” – is meaningful and meaningless in a way that only the German language allows. One day it might even become one of those golden words co-opted into the English language – like zeitgeist or schadenfreude. (Let’s retire Blitz, a word that is jaded and overused in sport, politics and beyond.)
Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf is the magic phrase for not getting anywhere fast while also suggesting everything is full steam ahead. It is sinister in a beautiful way. It is a phrase Kafka might use if he were writing today, a perfect description of a situation where no one can do anything but everyone is busy.
Since years they’ve slept on separating people from fright transport. So much money sunk into someone’s pocket, instead of adding more railway routes. But there also were a lot of NIMBYs blocking railway expansion, to be fair.
An anecdote of my student life:
For many years I commuted by train, on one of Germany’s worst train routes and 90% of the trains had at minimum 5 to 15 minutes delay. Also like 10% right out never arrived, so you had to wait for the train afterwards. The next train is 60 minutes later. If you had to transfer to another train, this often resulted in waiting 60 minutes, miss the transfer train, wait another 60 minutes. Lose additional random amount of minutes, because even if the second train arrived on time, you’d often be later than expected. God help you, if you needed to use a bus afterwards. Guess what, wait more, because you missed the bus you intended to actually use. Same fun on the way back, for a single day. While dealing with the stuff explained in the article. This breaks you inside.
Let’s do some simple math if you’re still reading:
A simple job, with 8 ½ hours work per day, plus commute time, with time lost from leaving earlier too, plus sleeping, could result in spending all day away from home. Leaving you between 0 and 1 hour remaining time, to do everything, like chores, cooking, friends, family, free time (haha).
I simply couldn’t do this and wonder how people have any real life, if they have to endure this every single day. For perspective, that’s a distance a lot of people travel for work and you can drive there by car, but there’s often slow traffic, but you’d probably save two hours or more every day, if you don’t use the train, even if you’re stuck in traffic.
Now people might say, you can just move. Yeah good luck with the Quadratmeterpreise for the apartment. Good luck if you’re a trainee or start your Berufsausbildung.
Yes, that’s how to fail the Energiewende. On the other hand, people could simply be more creative.
You say you have no time for friends, chores, free time? You just told us how much time you spent being unproductive!
Just wash your dishes in the crammed train. Physical contact and activities make it easy and fun to befriend other commuters. When missing another train, embrace it and relax 60 minutes. Or chop some veggies for dinner, endless opportunities!