i regularly travel from karlsruhe to munich and i can't work on the bus, since there is not enough space for my laptop. Working inside the train is pleasant and after christmas every ICE has free wifi (wow, that took forever for them to decide to implement it! Rolling out was rather quick)
That's generally my experience in Germany and Switzerland as well. Unless there are multiple hops involved e.g. Zurich-Würzburg with long waits in places like Stuttgart. If you have a non-stop connection it's great to work on a modern ice train with internet access.
The problem is that in Germany, the city-to-city trains that can be used with this ticket do not have WIFI IIRC. Can anybody confirm this?
Traveling time without WIFI is a much higher burden to me than normal traveling time, where I can work on my projects. I actually like working on the train. It is a nice environment. But without that possibility, long train rides are a chore to me.
And it will be interesting to see how crowded the trains will be.
Durig the 9-Euro ticket times, city-to-city trains were uncomfortably densely packed.
I'd heard rumors, so I was excited to get some work done on a bus from Hamburg to Berlin a couple months ago. Was disappointed when the wifi cut out after 10 minutes.
ICE is the worst transport, compared to the local lines that are now provided by commercial companies - I'm not talking about being on time (it's a fantasy), but Internet in the train itself in 2019th doesn't work at all. I used it regularly in 2018th, and it was ok - I could use that time to write a report in google docs, push some code, find information, etc. In 2019th, it simply doesn't work - I gave up, and either tether from my phone (if there is a signal), or just sit and read.
The coverage in Germany is really bad outside of the cities, area between Kassel and Fulda, and then further to the south is just a black hole. But when you enter into Austria on a train, you can say this just by seeing how fast internet is in the train, and there is a strong mobile signal...
I have a friend who commuted via high-speed rail from Berlin to Braunschweig, logging on via the rail WiFi to start work. He'd arrive in a little over 2 hours, work for ~4 hours, and head back home finishing his work day on the train. It's a long day on the train but he loved it and continues living in Berlin today.
Wow! that is a long commute. I have a friend who commutes from Leichlingen (20mins out of Cologne) to Aachen every day! He catches the RE48 into Cologne, and then ICE to Aachen, about 90mins one way. He said that the changing of the trains really stops him from doing any meaningful work on the laptop. I can understand that
He said that he use to drive, but that was killing his motivation. He told me is biggest fear is his reliance on the public transport with strikes and transport reliability. Fortunately, both are quite rare in Germany when compared to other countries.
I love taking the IC Bus + ICE from Eindhoven to Stuttgart. Takes me ~6.5 hours door-to-door, for c.a 140-150 euros round trip (with Bahncard 50). I could do this by car in roughly the same time and cost but then I couldn't work (at ca. 300kph no less!).
Flying would be silly too: much less (environmentally) friendly with lines and security checks, which also leaves less time to work.
I even have decent internet access the whole time, for free, which I would not have in an airplane.
In Germany, even the low-speed trains have met a powerful competition in form of coach bus lines.
The coaches are brand new, offer free WiFi, and are vastly cheaper than even the lowest-price DB tickets.
edit: another quite popular travel solution is car sharing("Mitfahrgelegenheit"); this is especially useful if you must drive with your own car (e.g. because you carry stuff you can't transport in a train/airplane) and want to lower your own travel costs.
They had a "High Speed" line before, but it was on old tracks, and they had to use tilting trains. I took it a few times when I lived in Berlin. It was somewhat slower than driving. Still, the ICE is an excellent train. It's very punctual (Germans will complain when it's five minutes late), it's smooth, it's clean, the seats are comfortable, you can get a seat with a table if you want, there are power outlets, and if you get hungry, you can go get a snack, a beer, or a full dinner. It's just just a civilized, pleasant way to travel. The Internet, either through the DB system, or my normal 3G/4G tethering was a bit spotty, but I was nearly as productive on the train as I would have been at the office. At six hours Berlin-Munich, it was much nicer, less stressful, and more productive en-route than an airplane, but somewhat slower. At four hours, the train is a no-brainer.
Air travel is the king of hidden time fees. They say that it's an hour from Berlin to Munich, but you have to show up at the airport an hour before the flight, it takes 15 minutes to get off the plane and get out to the curb, even if you didn't check a bag, it takes 40 minutes to get to the airport, and another 40 minutes to get from the airport to the city center. By the time you add it all up, 4 hours is how long it takes on the plane, and most of that is annoying stressful walking from one place to another, waiting in one line after another, cooped up in a tiny seat, and for maybe 30 minutes of the whole 4 hours, you can use your laptop and do something useful.
In Germany you can buy a yearly subscription for your daily commute train and that comes with a reserved seat and table and power plug for charging your laptop. From my observations, people are usually finishing powerpoint slides and answering emails during their commute.
Do you even need a fixed city these days? I've spent a lot of time on the European high-speed train network lately and I've jokingly been thinking about 'setting up office' in the train. For some reason I'm very creative and productive on trains.
You got wireless, snacks & drinks, relative quiet and if you take one of these all-you-can-travel (Germany: Bahncard 100) deals you just bought yourself an office in every German city for about 3500 euro / year. If you want first-class it'll be 5900 euro.
Internet connectivity is surprisingly poor on German trains. In 1st class, between Basel and Hanover, most of the time my phone (with Swisscom SIM) got better connectivity than the onboard wifi. Considering that this route connects Zurich and Frankfurt, you'd think there would be a smidgen more investment in bandwidth.
Its also worth mentioning that there are express connections between big cities that are relatively close. For example, there is a sprinter connection between Nürnberg and Munich that takes about 90 minutes using a regional train instead of the 60 minutes it would take with an ICE.
Yes, public transportation is oddly expensive in most German cities I know of. But the network is often very good and you can get special deals for month tickets with your employer.
In my experience, the mobile connection is very flaky on the trains in Germany.
I would think the train can have a much more powerful antenna to talk to mobile towers and then relay that to the passangers. So that WIFI is better than mobile data.
I said it's barely an issue for most people. Not barely an issue for everyone.
> Try getting to a different province/city etc, easily 30-100km away or more on "public transit".
I seriously considered commuting from Augsburg to Munich by train. Some of my co-workers do this. It's actually not that bad, train ride is about half an hour for 50km. Faster than driving, that's for sure.
In germany (currently month 2 of 3) there is an ticket for 9€ per month for using local public transport. Millions of tickets are sold and people are using the so much that the trains are litterally full. And the users are still enduring it.
For those who don't know it: german trains have an lowsy reputation at best, no cooling in the summer, no heating in the winter and every user has to plan for the case the train is 15 minutes or more late or broke on the way down.
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