Every time I visit Germany by train, something goes wrong.

Once I spent most of the day waiting on platforms, after some perfect-storm-like sequence of feedback effects interrupted not just the service I had a ticket for but also the fallback service we were advised to take instead, and then even the unscheduled service arranged specifically for the victims of the outage.

Another time, more pleasantly, I had an unscheduled wait of a couple of hours in Cologne: just long enough for an old friend to take the subway into town and have a beer with me.

Recently I visited the same friend for a weekend; predictably, something went wrong on the way home. This time it was only a communications breakdown, but one I found particularly amusing: the various automated systems announcing the timetables completely failed to cope with a planned change to the schedule.

The ticket I paid for was Cologne to Amsterdam, but my seat reservation was only valid to Utrecht; the reservation system, at any rate, knew that on the day I was travelling the international service to Amsterdam would end instead at Utrecht, and the last half-hour of the trip would have to be made on local trains.

In Cologne, an automated voice helpfully announced in three languages: “The ICE service to Utrecht leaving platform 5 at 17:32 will not stop in Utrecht.” (We’ll carry on until we fall off the edge of the world?) The board on platform 5 announced an ICE service to Amsterdam, and warned that it would not be stopping in Utrecht. (Not to the edge of the world then. I wonder what my seat reservation to Utrecht is worth if we don’t stop there?) On the train, around the time I would have expected to arrive in Utrecht (or not to arrive there, under the circumstances) the wee lighted displays said we were approaching Arnhem. (I wondered how far from Arnhem to Amsterdam and what time I would be getting home.) Then we pulled in to Utrecht: right on time, as predicted on my ticket, but somewhat befuddled.