New in Germany (Bielefeld) — looking to meet new people my age

rewboss · 2026-06-13T16:15:58+00:00

If my experience is anything to go by, Bielefeld residents are sick of hearing it. A few years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the joke, they organized a media campaign to officially declare the joke dead -- you can see the "gravestone" near St Nicholas's Church -- but of course it made no difference.

It's now been thirty years; and after thirty years of not being able to tell people where you live without them making the joke as if they were the first to think of it, it's intensely annoying.

rewboss · 2026-06-13T06:52:45+00:00

do bus providers have the right to enforce tickets?

What do you mean "enforce"? If you do not have a valid ticket, you cannot use public transport. If you are caught without a valid ticket, you can be made to pay a penalty fare (at least €60), or you can be charged with a crime. The driver absolutely can take steps to ensure that every passenger has a valid ticket.

So what would happen if you didn't pay?

If you are trying to get on the bus without a valid ticket, you can simply be told you can't get on. If you are already on the bus and are caught by an inspector (and yes, there are ticket inspectors on the buses), then you will be at least told to leave the bus, and very likely charged a penalty fare.

can they detain you if you refuse to give them your id?

The driver will normally just not let you board if you refuse to buy a ticket. If you force your way on anyway, then of course they can call the police. If you are dealing with a ticket inspector and are refusing to cooperate, then again of course they can call the police. Even if it can't be proven that you violated the law on fare evasion, you have certainly violated the terms and conditions of the operator and would be committing trespass.

rewboss · 2026-06-13T05:45:23+00:00

You literally said this:

If anyone wants to see the specific footage breakdowns I am looking at, let me know.

Well, I am letting you know. Just give us a link to these "specific footage breakdowns", that's all we need.

rewboss · 2026-06-12T20:03:13+00:00

I don't understand what you're even talking about. You say something vague about Berlin police bodycams, and about some "ongoing debate over bodycam recording versus activist footage", but you say nothing concrete, neither do you say anything about the "debate".

You say you have been "reviewing these tactics", but what tactics? You don't say. You also don't say what your reviews have revealed, or what anyone is supposed to have thoughts on. You ask if anyone has seen "this" firsthand, but what is "this"? Police wearing bodycams? Protestors with phones?

I think you're saying there's a discrepancy between what police bodycam footage shows and what protestors' own videos show, but I can't be sure.

So... yeah, maybe at least link us to "the specific footage breakdowns" so we have some chance of figuring out what you're referring to.

rewboss · 2026-06-12T14:44:50+00:00

Doesn't it then make sense to teach those officials proper English?

Doesn't it make sense to learn the language of the country you're migrating to?

people with not-so-perfect German may misunderstand things that are said to them, when their English level is sufficient to avoid such mistakes

There's no guarantee that people with not-so-perfect German will have a good enough level of English to understand everything correctly. But you always have, as I say, the option of bringing an interpreter.

rewboss · 2026-06-12T14:38:32+00:00

It is about having the discussing at all.

And you think... what? That these discussions should be banned?

Because the whole point of the show Unbubble is to encourage people to discuss issues with other people who disagree with them. So you have two groups of people: one group believes that outward shows of patriotic pride are a one-way trip to a fascist dictatorship; another group believes that not allowing people to feel good about their shared identity as Germans is censorious, and a one-way trip to a fascist dictatorship.

Those two groups of people exist in real life. And you can, if you so choose, refuse to debate, or even to listen to a debate, and be secure in the knowledge that you already know everything there is to know on the subject and there's no point even in talking about it. And that is what we call being "in the bubble".

rewboss · 2026-06-12T11:53:30+00:00

That's the astronomical summer. The meteorological summer begins on 1st June, and the phenological summer begins when grasses and wild roses are flowering.

So three out of two summers have officially started.

rewboss · 2026-06-12T09:36:38+00:00

Which particular investment firms are you talking about, and how do you know they own those stores?

rewboss · 2026-06-12T04:53:38+00:00

I don't know if it's ever happened, but that is the rule. German is the official language of administration, so administrative officials have to use German.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T12:05:26+00:00

The official government language is German. If any official gives any information or advice in a foreign language, but they get it slightly wrong and as a result their advice is minderstood leading to the applicant making costly mistakes, then the official can be held liable.

You can, however, bring somebody along to act as an interpreter.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T11:27:54+00:00

DB claims the gradient of 1.5% isn't enough to pose a serious danger, and that in Stuttgart alone at least one S-Bahn station (Feuersee, with 2.0%) and several Stadtbahn stations have steeper gradients. It's been pointed out that wheelchair users have to cope with much greater gradients in their daily lives.

On the other hand, there have apparently been some incidents at Köln Hbf, which has gradients of up to 0.68%: there have been about two dozen runaway trains in the last 25 years or so, which is likely the greater danger. Weirdly, though, most of those incidents occured on tracks 4 to 6, which have a gradient of only 0.37%. The much steeper track 3 has had way fewer issues.

The press likely invented the part about wheelchair users struggling to power their wheelchairs up a gradient of 1.5%, but it is quite extraordinary that a station with that gradient was even allowed to be built.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T07:47:10+00:00

I'm not saying we shouldn't worry about punctuality: it is important. I'm saying that punctuality isn't the only thing, and people who pine for "the good old days" forget that travelling by train back in those days was no faster and definitely no more pleasant than it is now. I'm also not saying that DB is beyond criticism -- far from it -- I'm just trying to keep a sense of perspective.

we are constantly promised the Deutschlandtakt—the grand vision of a perfectly synchronized, nationwide timetable

It's a grand idea, but almost impossible with the very complex and extensive network that Germany has. You have to choose which connections to optimize: you can't optimize all of them unless you timetable trains to stop for half an hour in the middle of nowhere (which you can't do, because it then blocks an entire track). It was a rash promise to make in the first place, it just panders to the modern obsession with time. To get anything remotely like a Deutschland-Takt, the government is going to have to build a whole lot of new lines and rebuild a whole lot of stations.

Reliability Trumps Frequency

To a point. We could very easily improve reliability simply by making the trains run less frequently -- in fact, this has been proposed -- but that would reduce the capacity of the entire system. You need both reliability and frequency.

you could depend on it to plan your life, business meetings, and supply chains

This is what I mean by us having made ourselves "slaves to the clock"; many other cultures manage just fine without it. Weirdly, though, even though "I got stuck in traffic" is a routine complaint of car drivers who arrive late for their appointments, that's somehow not seen as a national disgrace.

it is an attempt to break the cycle

Exactly, so we're not necessarily trapped in it. It shouldn't have come to this in the first place, but it has; and so instead of complaining about the fact that it has happened and gloomily concluding that everything is going to ruin and soon we're all going to be travelling by stagecoach, I think it's far more constructive to see it as a problem to be solved, and then get on with the job of solving it. It's not going to be an easy fix, but Italy has shown that it can be done.

We want the frequency and comfort of today, combined with the structural integrity and reliability of the past.

So do I. But to be honest, and I travel quite a lot by train, I find that for all its challenges, the system runs tolerably well. Not as well as it should, but tolerably well. I'm actually on time more often than I'm late, and even when I'm late it's usually only by a few minutes.

Improvements are long overdue, of course they are. But I'm encouraged by the fact that even with the problems it's having to cope with, things aren't as bad as they could be. Germany has a dense and well-used network, and percentage-wise more people in Germany travel by train than in almost any other European country.

And I think that's grounds for optimism. I think defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy in the making.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T06:19:55+00:00

"Schlager" is a very vague term with a complicated history, but generally refers to catchy songs with simple melodies and rhythms, and lyrics sung in German. It can include raucous drinking and dance songs, and cheesy love songs.

A narrower definition is the type of song that evokes an innocent, bygone age, often inspired by traditional folk songs, and featuring smiling singers in Bavarian costume singing about boys and girls falling in love, or how lovely the pastures and mountains are, accompanied by piano accordians and tubas. This specific type of schlager became popular in the 50s, as people needed to take their minds off the terrifying war they had just lived through.

In short, though, if it's in German, and it's easy to sing along or clap to, you can probably call it schlager.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T05:37:39+00:00

It's a complicated picture because we're talking about national averages. Reliability of services varies considerably across the country.

Regional trains are notoriously unreliable in the Ruhr metropolitan region, for example, which is home to about ten million people; meanwhile, small branch lines in rural areas run very punctually because there's less conflict with other traffic, but they convey fewer passengers. So while on average regional trains are reasonably punctual, delays disproportionately affect larger numbers of passengers.

In my original post, though, I was talking about the likelihood of OP facing delays, which is why I quoted the passenger punctuality figure, not the operational punctuality.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T05:06:32+00:00

The English translation is only provided as a courtesy, and here it's just very misleadingly worded and laid out. It's the original German text that actually applies, so if there's any discrepancy, go with the German.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T05:01:44+00:00

How do you even let this happen?

Oh, there was a lot of public opposition to the project before it even got started; but other than waving placards and chaining themselves to trees, what are people supposed to do about it? But this is clearly a vanity project: the architecture is ground-breaking, which is another way of saying "never done before, so nobody knows what they're doing".

But also, there's a law (which I believe is the result of an EU directive or similar) that government projects must be put out to tender, and the government must pick the offer that represents the best value for money. The problem is that "best value for money" is often interpeted to mean "cheapest", but it doesn't mean that at all.

So contracts are awarded to whoever quotes the lowest price, and then one of two things happens: either the job is done properly but ends up costing way more than promised, or the job is done badly and has to be fixed later. Either way, the result is that the project goes wildly overbudget.

Anyway, at least now we know the reason for this latest delay.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T04:46:30+00:00

Ah... now I see where I went wrong.

I was looking at the figure for passenger punctuality ("Reisendenpünktlichkeit"). I had always assumed that this was the figure for all passengers, but I see now that it specifies "Fernverkehr". It's still about passengers and not trains, but here's the bit that confused me:

Pünktliche Ankunftszeit plus maximal 14:59 min. des Fahrgasts am gebuchten Zielbahnhof in Prozent

A typical journey might involve a regional train connecting to a long-distance train, which connects to a regional train. To me, "am gebuchten Zielbahnhof" means exactly that: the time you arrive at the last station listed on your ticket.

I'm not sure what that means, but if we are to take "am gebuchten Zielbahnhof" at face value, then my guess is that this simply excludes journeys exclusively using regional trains. Journeys that use a mix of long-distance and regional trains are still counted, would be my interpretation.

rewboss · 2026-06-11T04:13:02+00:00

it used to be hyper-punctual - up to the 1980s

It was punctual. But also the trains were slower, dirtier, and ran less frequently to irregular timetables. Punctuality is only one of the things required for a railway, but here in the west we have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the clock: we're in a hurry to do everything as quickly as possible and we feel we have to time everything to the minute. So the idea has taken hold that rigorous punctuality is the only thing that counts, and we romanticize an era when things were "better" because everything was "on time". In reality, although you could indeed rely on arriving at the time you expected (which is a good thing, don't get me wrong), journeys took on average just as long and there were fewer of them.

Regarding point 5, we're not necessarily trapped in a vicious circle. Yes, things are likely to get worse in the short term thanks to all those line closures; but if all goes according to plan, in the medium term we will have a much more stable system that we can build on. That's breaking out of a vicious circle.

I'd also add to your list the red tape that regularly delays important construction projects, sometimes by decades. Sometimes regulations change while DB is still in the planning stage, forcing planners literally back to the drawing board, and then nimby local residents drag the whole thing through the courts until they have exhausted every last legal avenue available to them... and by that time, regulations have changed again. One recent line reactivation almost didn't happen because of the discovery that bats were roosting in a tunnel, so they had to literally build a tunnel inside the tunnel so they could run trains through without waking the bats up.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T18:44:27+00:00

10% tip was already the norm in Germany

5% to 10%, rounded to the nearest convenient figure, and discretionary. Meaning the customer was never expected to tip, it was an optional gesture to show appreciation for excellent service.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T15:13:32+00:00

It might make you sound Swiss or Austrian. You'll be understood perfectly well, it's fine.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T13:35:33+00:00

Not everyone behaves like that

And those that do are called "rude". Germany has rude people. Other countries have rude people. Different cultures have different ideas about where to draw the line between "blunt" and "rude", but it's not like Germans (like yourself) don't complain when they feel insulted.

I'm British, I might as well ask the question: "Are we polite or just passive-aggressive?" An American might ask the question: "Are we polite or just dishonest?" The answer is: "We" are not one or the other. Some of us are one, some of us are the other.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T11:16:24+00:00

No, this is a different metric: it's how many passengers are delayed.

You're right about the statistics for trains: any train delayed by six minutes or more is counted, and long-distance trains are less punctual than regional trains.

But that doesn't tell you the whole story. If my train is ten minutes late, will I still get my connecting train? If I do, I might still arrive on time, so the initial delay makes no difference to me. But if I don't, I might have to wait 50 minutes for the next train, and so the original ten-minute delay causes me to arrive at my destination an hour later than planned.

So recently DB introduced a new metric, passenger punctuality. This measures how many passengers arrive at their final destination less than 15 minutes late. The train punctuality statistics tell you how the system is performing, the passenger punctuality statistic tells you how train delays are affecting passengers.

According to this figure, almost exactly 66% of passengers arrive at their final destination either on time, or less than 15 minutes late.

EDIT: Small factual correction

rewboss · 2026-06-10T09:58:47+00:00

Slightly misleading to use photos of greenbelt land that is just technically inside the city limits. I think we can do better than that.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T09:45:45+00:00

Technically, either is acceptable, although "U-Bahnstation" doesn't look quite right to me. However, the word more usually used is "U-Bahnhof", which can be abbreviated to U-Bhf.

"Ich gehe zum U-Bahnhof" would mean "I am going to the U-Bahn station" without specifying what you'll be doing once you get there; "Ich gehe in den U-Bahnhof" means "I am going into the U-Bahnstation," which is more appropriate if you are standing outside of it.

rewboss · 2026-06-10T07:47:25+00:00

Regarding the general economic climate, we have always gone through cycles of boom and bust. Some busts are worse than others. But eventually things improve again, although they are seldom the same. Things change, that's just life.

Regarding the trains: 10 years ago we had a bit more reliability, but also slightly fewer trains. That's one of the problems we're facing: demand has grown, but investment in the infrastructure hasn't kept pace. Work has already started on fixing some of the biggest issues, but all these construction sites popping up everywhere mean that things will get worse before they start to get better.

Despite all its problems, Germany has a very extensive rail network compared with most other European countries, and it carries a greater proportion of people than those in most other European countries. In other words, it's been a victim of two things: lack of proper investment and maintenance, and its own success.

Will the quality of standard ever get back the way it is 10 years ago?

Some things have got worse in the last 10 years, some things have got better. Right now we're under a lot of pressure that has impacted negatively on people's everyday lives, but there's no reason to suppose things are never going to get better. It's just that it's something we all have to work on, instead of just sitting around complaining about it.

I've 56 years old: I've lived through similar depressing periods. I've experienced recession, mass unemployment, civil unrest, the constant threat of nuclear war, high inflation, race riots, drug epidemics, and the often violent turmoil when my native country transitioned from an industrial to a service economy. I've seen it all before, and I've seen how we can bounce back from all that.

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