Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
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If you open a trains detail view, then you see it‘s journeys history and see how punctual it was at the previous stops. That’s open more reliable than the LCD screens on the station. Like this here (I use it all the time)
@Larvitz @networkexception Btw, has DB navigator any way of looking up trains by number ?
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@Larvitz @networkexception Btw, has DB navigator any way of looking up trains by number ?
@Sobex @networkexception unfortunately I’m not aware. It’s always a bit finicky to look the trains up via the connection search or the booked ticket.
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz Important on some routes (eg Dresden-Berlin, Köln-Aachen): The "Zugbindung Aufgehoben"-Magic only works for DB trains (and RJ, EC, ...). You still cannot take long distance trains from private operators (EN, SJ, ...) without booking a new ticket first.
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@Larvitz Important on some routes (eg Dresden-Berlin, Köln-Aachen): The "Zugbindung Aufgehoben"-Magic only works for DB trains (and RJ, EC, ...). You still cannot take long distance trains from private operators (EN, SJ, ...) without booking a new ticket first.
@ysegrim yes. That’s offen announced in the trains via loudspeaker. I fell into that myself when I had a Eurostar ticket from SNCB and couldn’t use the ICE train to Köln one day, because DB didn’t accept the ticket for that one.
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@andrzej I write my blog posts myself, but use a small local LLM (Ministral 14B from Mistral on my laptop) to enhance the style and grammar when writing in English, which is a foreign language for me. I use AI to give the text an editorial pass before publishing.
@Larvitz Interesting. I often try the same. Just to fix grammar and spelling. Mostly to avoid embarrassments. And I find it genuinely challenging not to leak the LLM-personality in. I do prompt the model to not change the tone, and I think it mostly obeys, but I am obsessing that it leaves a bigger footprint than I would like to. Perhaps this is why I became so sensitive. Your text is strongly LLMy though. I tried mistral yesterday for a similar task and kicked the results out. qwen-3.5 did a better job for me (also run locally). Some say Qwen is less confident in English (i wouldn't have an idea) but maybe this makes it less pushy over style?
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@Larvitz Interesting. I often try the same. Just to fix grammar and spelling. Mostly to avoid embarrassments. And I find it genuinely challenging not to leak the LLM-personality in. I do prompt the model to not change the tone, and I think it mostly obeys, but I am obsessing that it leaves a bigger footprint than I would like to. Perhaps this is why I became so sensitive. Your text is strongly LLMy though. I tried mistral yesterday for a similar task and kicked the results out. qwen-3.5 did a better job for me (also run locally). Some say Qwen is less confident in English (i wouldn't have an idea) but maybe this makes it less pushy over style?
@andrzej Same observation here. The LLM does change the style in noticeable ways, and I accept that trade-off on a personal blog as long as the information is conveyed clearly.
having a somewhat „LLM-y“ text is still better than having the text suffering from my sometimes suboptimal English. I care more for the content than for my individual voice here. Guess that’s a matter of preference.
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz I might add one more useful website for DB travellers: https://strecken-info.de/
Ther you can see the official reasons for a blockage and perhaps even route FAR around it.Another thing I always use on train: A self-inlfatable cushion - only half way filled. That simulates "dynamic seating" and helps my lower back quite substantially,
Btw: I am a long distances commuter (one way 800km) for the last 14 years quite across the country....
Thanks for your insights!
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz Auf der Strecke von Bielefeld nach Kiel (Familie) habe ich mich so oft über doch nicht ohne Umstieg von Hannover nach Kiel durchfahrende ICEs geärgert, dass ich stattdessen neuerdings gleich mit meinem #Deutschlandticket und dem Regionalverkehr plane/fahre.
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz das erinnert mich an meinen Blogpost vor Jahren. Nicht so ausführlich wie bei dir, aber selbe Richtung.
Bahnfahren wie die Profis – Holger Hellingers' Polente
Wenn du wie ich in früheren Jahren 40.000km oder mehr im Jahr Bahn gefahren bist, dann hast du ein System wie du Strecken buchst um eigentlich immer anzukommen.…
Holger Hellingers' Polente (polente.de)
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@Larvitz das erinnert mich an meinen Blogpost vor Jahren. Nicht so ausführlich wie bei dir, aber selbe Richtung.
Bahnfahren wie die Profis – Holger Hellingers' Polente
Wenn du wie ich in früheren Jahren 40.000km oder mehr im Jahr Bahn gefahren bist, dann hast du ein System wie du Strecken buchst um eigentlich immer anzukommen.…
Holger Hellingers' Polente (polente.de)
@holger Steige nicht in Provinzbahnhöfen um (und Mannheim) ... Mannheim ist mein Heimat-Bahnhof
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@holger Steige nicht in Provinzbahnhöfen um (und Mannheim) ... Mannheim ist mein Heimat-Bahnhof
@Larvitz es ist nur Erfahrung
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz Danke für diesen hilfreichen Post!
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Several years of Deutsche Bahn business travel taught me something unexpected: eventually you stop fighting the system and start learning its moods, failure domains, and hidden virtues.
I wrote down the practical folklore that actually helps: apps, routing habits, delay survival, seat choices, fallback lines, and the strange civilisation of the Bordrestaurant at 250 km/h.
“A Field Manual for Three Years on Deutsche Bahn”: https://blog.hofstede.it/a-field-manual-for-three-years-on-deutsche-bahn/
@Larvitz I know it's nerdy, but #KDEItinerary is an app that can replace the DB Navigator for everything except buying tickets (which I do via bahn.de, then import the pdf). This, the bahn.expert site and https://gitlab.com/schmiddi-on-mobile/railway for quick connection lookups are my 3 companion apps/sites on every trip.
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