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Travis The Dragon said:
We got our first snow fall here. God, I hate winter. :
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Oh, how I'm looking forward to that. Every year, on first snow fall, everybody behaves like it's the first winter of their lives. You hear of car crashes because people didn't switch their tyres in time, even though by mid-November everybody knows it'll happen soon and, as every single previous fucking year has taught us, WITHOUT FOREWARNING. No, people, nature doesn't drive cars, it doesn't consider your needs. And despite the company's vows, I just know the city trains won't run, because they cut funding for some essential heating system and personell whose job it would be to defrost. Oh, so this year they're prepared for the winter? Just like the previous three years, when they swore to the allmighty that they're prepared for the winter? And when you stood there on the platform in the freezing cold waiting for your train for half an hour? And, no, "half an hour" isn't an exaggaration for five extra minutes... it was, literally, half an hour at times. On the worst days, you get a message on the electronic display reading, "due to difficulties in the process, the trains are currently running on irregular basis." Which means that you might stand there for one minute waiting for a train, and you might stand there for thirty minutes. And the worst part of it is that there is nobody you can ask about it, because all service personell was cut. And I'm willing to bet my arse they'll close down the central line for at least a few days again this year.
Every year I wonder, if first snowfall takes such apocalyptic proportions every single time, how did our species survive for so long?

/rant
 
Perun said:
Oh, how I'm looking forward to that. Every year, on first snow fall, everybody behaves like it's the first winter of their lives. You hear of car crashes because people didn't switch their tyres in time, even though by mid-November everybody knows it'll happen soon and, as every single previous fucking year has taught us, WITHOUT FOREWARNING. No, people, nature doesn't drive cars, it doesn't consider your needs. And despite the company's vows, I just know the city trains won't run, because they cut funding for some essential heating system and personell whose job it would be to defrost. Oh, so this year they're prepared for the winter? Just like the previous three years, when they swore to the allmighty that they're prepared for the winter? And when you stood there on the platform in the freezing cold waiting for your train for half an hour? And, no, "half an hour" isn't an exaggaration for five extra minutes... it was, literally, half an hour at times. On the worst days, you get a message on the electronic display reading, "due to difficulties in the process, the trains are currently running on irregular basis." Which means that you might stand there for one minute waiting for a train, and you might stand there for thirty minutes. And the worst part of it is that there is nobody you can ask about it, because all service personell was cut. And I'm willing to bet my arse they'll close down the central line for at least a few days again this year.
Every year I wonder, if first snowfall takes such apocalyptic proportions every single time, how did our species survive for so long?

/rant
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I was under the impression that Germany's improved their railway infrastructure, trains etc, the entire train network? That it actually works quite well compared to 10 or so years ago?

Obviously I was mistaken.

Edit: Congrats, Dr EW!!!!!
 
Yax said:
I was under the impression that Germany's improved their railway infrastructure, trains etc, the entire train network? That it actually works quite well compared to 10 or so years ago?
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No, I remember ten years ago as a time when trains ran on time, service was good and the trains were something you could rely on. The policy during the last ten years has been with the goal of privatisation. I don't know how it works legally, but the idea was that the national company, the Deutsche Bahn, would become a corporation, and to that end, a certain amount of revenue had to be reached and maintained. Whether this was self-imposed or is legal, I don't know, and I actually don't care either. Apart from raising fees and introducing new ones, the primary means to do this was to cut costs wherever possible- closing small stations, especially in rural areas, cutting back on customer service and especially cutting back on employees. This, of course, also severely affected maintenance, and last summer, there was a nation-wide scandal about the cooling malfunctioning in high speed trains, with temperatures of 40° and more inside, leaving many passengers to collapse due to the heat. Also, Germans have by now gotten used to trains running late, especially under heavy weather conditions. A train being late 15 minutes or more is normal by now, and delays of five minutes or under are not even listed as delays in the official statistics anymore.
But what I was primarily talking about was the situation in Berlin. Part of the local public transit network, the S-Bahn, is run by an affiliate of the Deutsche Bahn. For the company's privatisation process, the S-Bahn had to pass on a certain amount of revenue anually, which basically encompasses all or most of its profit... leading to the situation that despite making quite astronomic revenue, none of the money could be used for maintenance or improvement, but had to be transferred to the Deutsche Bahn.
In effect, what the S-Bahn did was to cut costs wherever possible and beyond. They dismissed a great chunk of their employees, bought cheap trains and stopped track and train maintenance wherever it was not deemed necessary... which ended in disaster. A few trains broke down due to manufacturing errors, which required checkup on all remaining trains of the same model, and an emergency schedule had to be enforced which is still in effect, three years later... in fact, in the meantime we've had an emergency emergency schedule. For several weeks, half of the network was decomissioned, and the rest of the trains ran once or twice per hour when they actually had a five minute cycle. That was in the summer of 2009, if I recall correctly. A journalist commented jokingly, but truthfully, that in 1945, it took the Russians 1.5 million soldiers, 10.000 tanks, one million grenades and 6.000 aeroplanes to stop the S-Bahn, and now the same had been achieved with four managers. And every time the company announced a fixed date for everything returning to normal, winter broke in and the entire network broke down again because of frost damage due to lack of maintenance. For the past few weeks now, the trains here have been running irregularly, because, lo and behold, a number of train drivers filed ill that was too big for any replacement to be found. As with the past few years, the company has stated that the system is perfectly prepared for the winter, and as with the past few years, I don't believe a word of it. I'm expecting complete breakdown for this winter once more.
 
Travis The Dragon said:
We got our first snow fall here. God, I hate winter. :(
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Winter is the best season of the year, hands down. Maybe I love winter as much as this because I was born in the dead of winter, last day of January.  :bigsmile:
 
Funnily enough, I still don't actually need a coat outside. Some folk are still in t-shirts. We've had the mildest October and November in decades. That's not to say that it won't turn soon.
 
It's been great weather for the most part- I am wishing for a little warmer today; I'm trying to finish my vinyl siding today!
 
It's a balmy -15 C with a windchill of -22 C... 4 cm of snow last night... welcome to Winterpeg... they say it builds character...
 
taker64 said:
It's a balmy -15 C with a windchill of -22 C... 4 cm of snow last night... welcome to Winterpeg... they say it builds character...
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Admittedly last time I was there was mid march, but I was still in shorts  :innocent: Even if just to prove everyone wrong when they said "YOU'LL NEED TO TAKE HATS AND SCARVES AND GLOVES!!!" The cold doesn't bother me, I still walked to work here when it snowed and the hill was a massive sheet of ice.
 
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