Several people have warned me about how bad the German train system is.
When we arrived at 5.30pm to get our train from Paris to Berlin, the noticeboard said the train was delayed by an hour!
Helene knew a nice cafe just outside Gare du Nord station. We went to it and had drinks. The cafe has live departure times. Half way through our drinks, a further 30 minute delay was announced! We ordered some chips. We didn’t need them but saw someone else eating them and they looked good. Earlier, when we’d learnt the train’s restaurant was out of service, we’d bought food for the journey.
At the station, I got talking to a Canadian who was with his son. The father was visiting family and he and his son were now on their way to Berlin. He was calm but concerned about the delay because they didn’t have much time in Berlin. He observed how could the night train be delayed. It’s been waiting all day to leave!
Fortunately, the extra 30 minute delay didn’t materialise. The train left only about an hour late.
Helene and I had not been able to book the same berth on the night train. We were in different, but adjacent, coaches. I was with a young couple and their two children. Helene was with a French couple and a (rather unfriendly) German woman.
On boarding, we asked the train staff if they could put us in the same compartment. The person said he’d look into it.
Very quickly after leaving, the fire alarm in Helene’s coach went off. There was no obvious cause for this. The staff could not fix the malfunction. It rang for the whole journey. So every berth in Helene’s coach had to be evacuated. This taxed the staff so much that they gave up on finding a berth for Helene and me.
The Paris-Berlin train only just restarted. It’s clear that the company, European Sleeper, have cut a lot of corners to make the service financially viable. They have not even ordered new trains. The current trains are ancient! Half the toilets were out of order.
The berth’s themselves were not great either. There were six beds in each. Being in the middle berth meant you had to be horizontal since there wasn’t enough vertical space to sit up. Compared to night trains in India, these were a step into the dark ages. The Indian trains are comfortable and have all sorts of practical features, such as individual power sockets, pouches to place items, meals delivered to your berth (if you pre-booked it) and so on.
Having been moved to another coach, Helene was now much further away. For dinner, we met in a middle coach.
During the journey, I slept on and off. On waking about 9am, there was an announcement. I was expecting/hoping that we’d made up for lost time. Instead, we were told that the train lost a further two hours because it had to be re-routed overnight! Our arrival time was now 1pm instead of the originally scheduled 10am.
At about 11.20am, there was another announcement saying we’d gained 30 minutes. We’d be arriving at 12.30pm! Then 10 minutes later, the announcer seemed to be surprised at the latest development he was about to tell us about: we’d be arriving in 20 minutes, that is at 11.50am!
This was certainly one of the most comical journeys I’ve ever had. Helene looked at reviews later. Some people said that they had to get off the train in the middle of the night and get on a bus! We’d been lucky!
Update: given the delay, I wrote to European Sleeper to ask for some refund. Initially, they wrote back saying that the train had been only 54 minutes late. When I queried this, the person (Lisa) said that passengers had been told of the delay before the train left. She said it was the revised expected time not the scheduled time that determined how late you were! This was bonkers. Any train company could change the arrival time and never be late. The EU website said that, unless you’re told of the delay before you buy the ticket, it’s the scheduled time that’s relevant. I sent Lisa a link to the website and asked that she escalate the issue. Her reply, copy/pasted from someone who knows the law, quoted to me what I had told them! The train had been between 60-119 minutes late and a 25% refund was due. It was written in such a way as if to suggest that this was their position all along! I wrote back asking how to get the refund. I haven’t heard since. I’ll update this post when the saga ends.