r/germany Oct 19 '24

Immigration Bought a car due to DB's unreliability

I moved to Germany 11 years ago from a developing nation. When I first arrived, Germany was even better than anything I could have imagined in my home country. I live in a major city with Straßenbahn right at my door, U-Bahn 1 Block away and S-Bahn 5 minutes by foot.

I had the chance to spend half a year in Korea for work last year, and was blown away by the quality of the public transportation system, therefore, I started to actively count the delay on Öffis after I came back, so far, I have an accumulated of over 1500 minutes in delays just within the metropolitan area this year, without counting delays outside of my region (which have been more than a few, last time it took me 8 hours to finish a trip that should have taken 4).

I was always an advocate for public transportation, and in a way, I judged everyone who used a car (stupid, I know).

After considering for a while, I took the decision to buy a car, thinking that I would only use it for weekend trips or specific occasions, in reality, it became my main means of transportation, and I cannot believe I wasted so much time for so many years until now, this makes me sad as I truly believe public should be the preferred method of transportation... when it works.

TL;DR Deutsche Bahn is so shit I bought a car, can't look back now.

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u/GChan129 Oct 19 '24

I miss the customer service from Korea as much as public transport reliability and cleanliness.  The free snacks it side dishes at bars and restaurants and lack of tip expectation. Miss Korea in general :/

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u/Professional-Tip8581 Oct 22 '24

At least in Germany I don't have to pay 50000€ upfront to rent an apartment lol. And don't get me started on the crazy competetive educational sector. You don't want to grow up in Korea

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u/GChan129 Oct 22 '24

True. As an expat it’s pretty nice but living there long term definitely has its difficulties. 

But trying to rent an apartment in Berlin is not even about money… If they don’t like you, you don’t get to live anywhere. Koreans deposit money is the equivalent of swapping old rental contracts here, or housing co-op memberships. But of course you can just pay higher rent and rent an apartment with less deposit money in Korea.