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The trains, and what Germans say about them
Deutsche Bahn is a national conversation topic in the way weather is elsewhere, and the complaints are real: long-distance punctuality has in recent years sat closer to sixty per cent than to the ninety the system was built for, and DB publishes the figures monthly, which keeps the argument well supplied. The network itself is extensive and the trains are fast — an ICE will do three hundred kilometers an hour — but decades of underinvestment in track have caught up with it. Practical things worth knowing. A Sparpreis ticket booked weeks ahead can be a third the price of the walk-up fare, but it binds you to one specific train; the Flexpreis does not. A BahnCard 25 or 50 pays for itself quickly if you travel at all often. The Deutschlandticket, introduced in 2023, gives unlimited regional and local transport nationwide for a flat monthly fee and has been genuinely transformative — it will not get you on an ICE, but it will get you almost everywhere else.