Before I came to Germany, I thought the trains would be very good. Indeed, at first, it seemed like they were. However, the more trains I used, the more I realized what a disaster they can be.

The trains are seemingly almost always late. Sometimes a few minutes, sometimes half an hour. They are cancelled at random. Catching your connecting train can be a matter of luck. Often they are heavily overcrowded, with people filling the aisle between the seats. A ton of the bathrooms on trains are out of order, leading to long lines. Many trains, buses and trams do not have any air conditioning and are very hot. Buses will be scheduled, and then sometimes just never appear, or arrive at random unscheduled times. Often the digital signs are incorrect or confusing. German train stations do not have any drinking fountains, and the staff at restaurants are not allowed to refill water bottles. Most of the train stations have very little or no seating. If the stations have bathrooms, you have to pay to use them.

I've had a bunch of trains I was waiting on cancel at the last minute. I've been on a journey where I had to change trains in a random town somewhere, and when I got off the first train, I found out the second one was cancelled, and had to figure out how to continue my journey.

The worst was last night when I was on my way from Düsseldorf to Bielefeld at night. The train stopped in a small town called Hamm at around 22:00, and told everyone the journey was cancelled and to get off the train. The announcement was only in German, so I had to ask around to find out what happened. Some guy told me there was another train that was about to leave the station that was also heading to Bielefeld, so we ran to the other platform. We heard it was the last train of the night that was heading there from Hamm. The train was absolutely jam packed with people shoved in as tightly as possible, filling every corridor, and it was a total frenzy with everyone trying to get on. There was shouting and arguing. The conductor closed the door after preventing anyone else from coming aboard, and the second he walked away, people opened it again and ran to try and pack themselves in. They had to call the Polizei to break up the chaos so the train could leave. There were probably 100 people that were stranded in the Hamm station, with one poor lady at the service counter dealing with all of them. Who knows how long they had to wait for another train. I had to cancel my plans and go back the other way to the last town to stay for the night.

It's really a crapshoot whether the trains will go well or not. When you make plans, expect them to go wrong. You don't know when you'll get somewhere, or if you'll even get there at all. I've even had a German local tell me they're just getting worse and worse. I had another German tell me, "German punctuality is just a myth."

The 9-Euro ticket seems like an awesome thing, and it definitely can be at times, but it's often an awful, stressful experience.