My sore spot

There are not many things in the world that really piss me off and annoy the hell out of me. I am happy to announce that the German railway (Deutsche Bahn) is constantly leading my charts. As soon as I take one step into a trainstation I get this hint of annoyance. The Berlin main trainstation really pushed me to my annoyance level: Following the signs to the luggage storage led me and my visitor through all 4 levels of the stations, walking in circles and loops and finally ending up at the luggage lockers just to find a sign which said "please go to level 1 to the luggage storage". WTF?

So we asked the friendly lady at the service point where to put the luggage: we got some direction to the luggage storage service of the German railways (with the advise that all the lockers are full for today). It only took as mere 20 minutes in line with the ridiculous sum of 2 people before us until it was out turn. Then we had the pleasure to watch one of Frankenstein's monsters trying to fix a stapler and nearly stapling himself to his desk before he finally realized that a couple of VERY annoyed people were waiting to hand in their luggage. Honestly, ridiculous! At that point we were already aware of the fact: we need to pick up the bag at the same location in a while...

Next stop: buying a ticket. My dear visitor still had a voucher from his last trainride on a sleep train. Why he got a voucher? The entire sleeping cabin was contaminated with bedbugs... However it was impossible to use the voucher online and on the ticket machine. So, back to queuing up again. The woman at the counter informed us that there are so many different vouchers and only a max of 50% of them work in the ticket machines... Great, thank you dear ticket selling woman for pointing out the incompetence of Deutsche Bahn. And another detail which just makes me shake my head in disbelief: when you buy a ticket at the counter you have to pay EUR 2,50 service charge... I wonder why this voucher did not work at the ticket machine.

When we arrived on the platform the fun continued with endless delays without any clarification when the train will arrive and why it has been delayed.

There is just one thing left to say to express my embarassment for having this awful company having the railway monopoly: Zänk juu for träwelling wiz Deutsche Bahn.

(for you non-Germans: The German Railway is very well known for their excellent English skills, therefore there is a group on the German facebook just dedicated to this amazing company....)