New week, new adventures with Deutsche Bahn. When things break, you have to fix them. Now, the thing is, railway technology is well over 100 years old and has been constantly evolving. You’d think Deutsche Bahn would have it under control.

On the other hand, my train is late again today. Deutsche Bahn’s reason: construction work. Once near Duisburg, and again between Mannheim and Karlsruhe. Because of that, the train is being rerouted through Heidelberg. Construction happens and it’s necessary, I get that.

But construction work is also rarely spontaneous, especially not two separate projects. I bought the ticket for this trip a week ago. There was no mention of construction or possible delays then. I don’t need to go to Mannheim, so that’s good at least. But how incompetent do you have to be to not announce construction work in advance? Even without an estimated delay, just a note in the schedule would be something. But nope, nothing.

I always get up in time to catch the 2:45 AM train. I’d love to know beforehand if I could sleep for an extra 30-45 minutes. Deutsche Bahn knows about this in advance, but they can’t be bothered to inform their customers. Or are their IT systems really that terrible? I’m slowly starting to get that impression.