During four months of studying in Germany I have had the pleasure of travelling by train on several different occasions. I started with Frankfurt, moved to Weimar, went back and forth to Bremen twice; visited Bielefeld; criss-crossed within the borders of Thüringen and briefly visited Berlin and the Netherlands. Having witnessed what seems like a pompously excessive amount of different railway routes, I have found that there’s one national trait I have never experienced anywhere else:

All German trains have a secret timetable. This schedule is best described as a masterpiece of mystery. It wildly differs from the ones presented at the train stations and is under no circumstances shared with passengers, probably for safety reasons. The king of timetables is something unique for Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) and its algorithms are so ingenious that they will most probably stay unsolved to the rest of humankind until the end of time. It is common knowledge that ”Im Deutschland sind wir pünctlich.” (In Germany we are punctual.) but it was only after a few weeks of integration that I realized that the word punctual actually stands for “at least fifteen minutes late”.