A little "training" in Europe

[cirdan]

Interesting. We have a trip planned for next year that involves a fair amount of European train travel.

One thing I was wondering about is how to check status on trains if you are going through several countries. I would prefer not to have to load an app for every countries' rail system that we are going through.

I find the German DB (bahn.de) website is very good, it provides information for most trains in most European countries, including real-time information when things go wrong.

 

[cirdan]

We arrived shortly after the mask mandate on German public transportation was lifted and had anticipated still needing them. Few masks seen for the two weeks there and not an issue until boarding our flight home.

Germany was actually one of the last European countries to drop mask mandates on its trains. You still needed masks on trains at a time that you could go into any restaurant or bar without one. This also led to odd situations on international trains. I was on one such train where one minute there was an automated announcement that you were required by law to wear a mask and there would be hefty fines for anybody who didn't, and the next minute there was an announcement that said, when removing your mask please dispose of it in the trashcan and don't just dump it on your seat.

 

[jiml]

Germany was actually one of the last European countries to drop mask mandates on its trains. You still needed masks on trains at a time that you could go into any restaurant or bar without one. This also led to odd situations on international trains. I was on one such train where one minute there was an automated announcement that you were required by law to wear a mask and there would be hefty fines for anybody who didn't, and the next minute there was an announcement that said, when removing your mask please dispose of it in the trashcan and don't just dump it on your seat.

We certainly anticipated needing masks after wearing them for most of our flight from Canada (as required). It was surprising to see very few in the entire two weeks following - particularly in Germany - and then usually Asian tourists, which was not that unusual even before Covid. It seemed like Europe, and especially England, had reached the mask exhaustion point by then. Although a few signs "recommending" remained, no announcements were made until boarding the plane home.

 

[Willbridge]

I find the German DB (bahn.de) website is very good, it provides information for most trains in most European countries, including real-time information when things go wrong.

I agree. When I went to Siberia in 2010 I was able to get a well-formatted stop by stop timetable from DB for the entire trip. This made it easy to avoid trains that cut through Kazakhstan when I was booking in the Russian site. Poland's site was also awkward, so I checked some itineraries in the DB site for my 2018 trip.

DB web info was started at the dawn of the WWW by young volunteers because DB was behind. So it is "path dependent" from the customer-friendly start. Sort of like volunteers having to step in here.