Don’t mess with an express train …
I literally run into all the shit you probably can run into on a Friday when taking the train home.
I had to travel from Saarbrücken to Köthen (Anhalt) via Mannheim and Braunschweig. It’s an unwritten law, that the trains are mostly overcrowded on Fridays (because everyone wants to get home). I was lucky and my company already made seat reservations.
Crowded (Photo by Manfred Yeung)
Instead of changing the train in Mannheim, I catched up with the train in Frankfurt (Main). What I didn’t realized, was the point that it had cost my seat reservation. The train was totally overcrowded – as expected – and another man was sitting on my seat. All of a sudden, he booked via internet and had the same seat reserved as I. The conductor said to me, that you only reserve a seat from the starting station and if you don’t take it, the reservation is void after 20 minutes.
Well, found a seat after a lot of people got out of the train the next station (Hanau) I enjoyed my ride till Braunschweig. The train had a delay of two minutes. The connecting train scheduled on the same platform 5 minutes later. It just happened to me, that I thought, that I had my tickets left in the compartment. I instantly jumped back in, checked the compartment, ran out and – bang – the door just closed. I tried to open it, ran to the conductor, but the only thing he did, was to tell the driver a ‘Go!’. “We can’t wait 30mins on every station, man!”, he sarcastically said. I would have loved to punish him at least 30 minutes from this station on, because this ment, that I had to pick the local trains connecting Wolfsburg with Magdeburg and Magdeburg with Köthen.
I had to wait one hour in Wolfsburg. Nice city – same as Köthen: nothing there than a small station hall. But it came even better. I hopped in the train to Magdeburg and two right wing extremists with me. Of course they didn’t had a ticket. I was surprised: the conductor didn’t raised a train fee of 40 EURs, he just mentioned that they need to buy a ticket at the automat. Try to do that during the week and you’ll have a hell of a trouble. After they started to play rassistic music, I moved to the other end of the train. No one seemed to care anyways – the conductor was never seen again till Magdeburg main station.
I took it like a man, when the train conductor just mentioned that there is a rail replacement bus service on part of the track and arrived home after 9 hours instead of 6.
Evil has a name: bicycle
While I was sitting in my train back home, I heard the train driver pestering about the bikes, which you’re allowed to bring free in the train:
“Too many bikes in the train. They [the Bahn managers; note from the editor] should introduce a fee for the bikes and the amount of bikes in the train will drop. The bikes are a big problem.”
I do have a better proposal to make: Raise the ticket prizes extraordinary, so that no one can affort taking the train. I’m pretty sure, that this not only solves the bike problem, it will also solve the issues with the customers 
They even demand service for they money – unbelievable.
Customer is King!
What happened one day on my trip using “Deutsche Bahn”:
Taking your bike for a ride
I use the train everyday and bring my bike. To make this story short, I created a little sketch about the bike compartments in the train (Regionalbahn) and where I put my bike. If you put your bike where I put mine, it blocks a bit the way, but it’s still no problem to walk through. The only thing which can block, is a person sitting there.
“Because you don’t comprehend!”
So, after I put my bike there, the train driver came up, yelled at me why I don’t
put my bike in the ‘bigger’ part of the compartment. I was surprised. What for a difference does it make?
He said, I should put the bike on the bigger part of the compartment, because the signs outside of the train on both windows (see the sketch) say so. I kept arguing, that the clamps for the bike go right through the whole compartment. The driver yelled: “You don’t comprehend!!!” and moved away.
Now the attendant came and yelled at me, I need to put the bike away. This time, it was her, who wasn’t able to pass through. I had to laugh a bit, because she was standing right next to the bike and it was very obvious that she was able to just walk through. The train driver joined her again and now both yelled at me.
Shit hits the fan…
We reached a new level, after the station security joined. But instead of yelling, she played the card with the disabled people. She said, that they’ll pull in a disabled man, so I need to put my bike away. I gave up and moved my bike.
The train started, I was pissed. The attendant now checked my tickets very carefully and she was – surprise, surprise – very kind. When I got out of the train, I asked a passenger who was sitting right there where my bike was first time, if they pulled in a disabled person.
He told me, that it wasn’t the case. So I figured, that the train security just fooled me. I thought: “What the hell? Now they’re using disabled passengers to get those things straight?”
I filed a complaint. Let’s see what happens…
Update: I got a reply from the Bahn customer service. The wrote, that the statements from the Bahn employees are different to my ones (surprise, surprise!!). Though, they pointed out that the bike can only be placed in the marked areas (I did that already). To summarize: I think I can put it where I already put the bike.
Update: Customer service called a week later after I received their reply. They asked for my statement about their reply. We discussed the situation again. Well, at least that call was somewhat satisfying.
