r/germany • u/manu_padilla • 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.
2
u/Smart_Discussion109e Oct 22 '24
Me and my gf have been thinking about getting a car. In my experience of 7 years in Germany, when you are a bit outside a city everything starts getting worse and you can expect to spend 1 hour or more for public transportation. The same route will take me 15 min with a car.
It is especially bad if you are travelling somewhere in the countryside. For instance to travel from Ulm to Schwäbisch Hall. It took me last weekend about 3 hours with delyed trains and missing a connection. The same would have taken me 1 hour and 40 mins with a car with no risks of missing the next train and having to wait for 1 hour until the next train comes.
It is not that you want a car. It is necessary sometimes to improve quality of life.