Oberbayern

[paddington]

I am currently visiting Salzburg and took bus 840 to Berchtesgaden (Germany).

This is operated by DB so I was surprised that tickets must be bought on board from the driver. I bought a day ticket which was only valid on buses and if rail travel is desired it seems an extra ticket is required, which seems unusual in Germany.

I was the last to board and saw the driver putting away everyone's money into her wallet whilst my ticket was being printed. I estimated at least €500 in there of which €200+ had just come from the previous passengers.

Later a lady boarding at an isolated stop near the border presented a €100 note and the driver didn't blink when giving her €95+ in change.

I was confused by why Berchtesgaden Hbf is so called, when there are no other stations nearby such that one needs to be designated the "main" station. There were also no ticket machines I could see and had to buy a ticket on board from a conductor, again a first for me in Germany.

 

[Bletchleyite]

The change thing is quite a cultural change over there - or maybe it's the "north south divide" which is easily as pronounced in Germany as in the UK. When I lived over there in the late 1990s, people would get really uppity if you didn't have something close to correct change in any setting.

 

[Quakkerillo]

Berchtesgaden Hbf is called Hbf because before, the town had more stations, as there was also a line going East and then North towards Salzburg which had an Berchtesgaden Ost, as well as a line from a different station across the river from Hbf going South to Königsee.

 

[JonathanP]

Deutsche Bahn operate large numbers of rural bus services. However, as far as I know there it's just another arm of their sprawling business interests and the operation of the bus services has nothing more in common with the rail side than Arriva's local bus operations in the UK do with their rail franchises. Any common ticketing would be driven by the local Vekehrsverbund as usual.

Yes, there is definitely a cultural preference for cash in Germany, backed up by it still being the only payment option in many establishments and it's becoming more and more pronounced as most of the rest of Europe moves to an almost-cashless society. Go to a electronics store right now during the christmas season and I guarantee you will see people buying laptops and digital cameras with fistfuls of notes, which would be very strange in Britain.
It requires a bit of a mental correction from me when traveling abroad, for instance if you go to the Netherlands and try to pay in cash using anything other than exact change you will get a panicked look, even though it's the same currency.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I must admit, even though I'm a Germanophile in many ways, that if you go there in 2018 it has the feel of a country that hasn't really changed that much since the 1990s - it was really modern then, but now in many ways is looking quite dated? High cash usage would be just one symptom of that.

 

[nw1]

I am currently visiting Salzburg and took bus 840 to Berchtesgaden (Germany).

This is operated by DB so I was surprised that tickets must be bought on board from the driver. I bought a day ticket which was only valid on buses and if rail travel is desired it seems an extra ticket is required, which seems unusual in Germany.

I was the last to board and saw the driver putting away everyone's money into her wallet whilst my ticket was being printed. I estimated at least €500 in there of which €200+ had just come from the previous passengers.

Later a lady boarding at an isolated stop near the border presented a €100 note and the driver didn't blink when giving her €95+ in change.

I was confused by why Berchtesgaden Hbf is so called, when there are no other stations nearby such that one needs to be designated the "main" station. There were also no ticket machines I could see and had to buy a ticket on board from a conductor, again a first for me in Germany.

I do remember Berchtesgaden Hbf had a full ticket office in 2014 when I was there; remember buying a 'Bayern-Ticket' from that.

Service pattern then was an hourly shuttle to Freilassing, though not always with good connections towards Salzburg, though maybe the bus serves most of that market.
In both 2011 and 2014, one of the hourly shuttles was replaced by a loco-hauled through service to somewhere in the north of Germany, around the late afternoon/early evening, and in the evening most of the trains extended to Salzburg, perhaps because the bus didn't run late?

In 2009, 2011 and 2012 I travelled in this part of Germany quite a bit. Very much a BR 1980s and 1990s feel then, with many trains, even locals (Munich-Garmisch-Innsbruck and Munich-Salzburg slows, for instance), being loco-hauled with quite old stock reminiscent of early Mk2s, though by 2014 many of these had gone.

Germany does seem to have retained far more branch lines than us though; for instance at Freilassing there was not only the Berchtesgaden branch but also a branch to somewhere north of there with a two-hourly diesel service. Similarly just about all the stops called at by the fast services from Munich to Salzburg had their own branch line(s) generally run by 1- or 2-coach DMUs. Also further west, the Munstertal branch near Freiburg; no way would a line like that survive in the UK, sadly; even a tourist centre like Keswick (IMX busier than Munstertal) lost its trains long ago. A taste of what the UK would have been like without such a severe implementation of Beeching?

 

[Bletchleyite]

Service pattern then was an hourly shuttle to Freilassing, though not always with good connections towards Salzburg

For some reason the "Meridian" trains from Muenchen to Salzburg are not "im Takt", the timetable is a right mess and there is a serious problem with overcrowding. No idea why this is.

Edit: looks like it now is much closer to being so.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I was surprised by the high opaque metal fences east of Freilassing recently, on the DE/AT border.
Seemingly a remnant of the Syrian refugee crisis and heightened immigration controls.
Not quite as bad as the rail approach from the west to Berlin Friedrichstrasse in the cold war, but a reminder of how it was and could be again.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I was surprised by the high opaque metal fences east of Freilassing recently, on the DE/AT border.
Seemingly a remnant of the Syrian refugee crisis and heightened immigration controls.
Not quite as bad as the rail approach from the west to Berlin Friedrichstrasse in the cold war, but a reminder of how it was and could be again.

There always was a fair bit of paranoia around Freilassing. I had my ID checked on a train north from there in the late 1990s - it's a good job they accepted a German resident's permit (a bit of paper with a photo stapled to it), as I wasn't carrying my passport. Only time I ever got my ID checked in Germany other than when actually crossing a border. I think at the time the rise of Joerg Haider had caused it.

 

[duesselmartin]

I was surprised by the high opaque metal fences east of Freilassing recently, on the DE/AT border.
Seemingly a remnant of the Syrian refugee crisis and heightened immigration controls.
Not quite as bad as the rail approach from the west to Berlin Friedrichstrasse in the cold war, but a reminder of how it was and could be again.

Calais Fretun also has impressive fences.
If I remember correctly, pre Schengen Salzburg had the border infrastructure with gates and fences in platforms, similar to Chiasso nowadays.

 

[swissrailpassion]

I was in Berlin today and arrived on a loco hauled train of 8 carriages, went to a large bookshop with plentiful choices and many floors, had tea in the basement atrium cafe after listening to music releases on comfortable chairs . My DVD and book were then wrapped in the christmas wrapping section by an assistant free of charge before I returned to the station for a 14 carriage train. If that's back to the 90's - bring it on.

 

[duesselmartin]

The 90s in 2018 is fine for rail Fans, but the every day passenger?
The 1990s had lots of investment to bring east Germany up to scratch but little in multiple units. Operations in Oberbayern where much like in the 1970s.
Sadly investment declined from the 2000s in the hope of a profit for privitisation, the latter never happened.
The result is delays, cancellations , overall reduced quality.
Symptomatic are the many shamefully dirty ICE sets in Germany.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Calais Fretun also has impressive fences.
If I remember correctly, pre Schengen Salzburg had the border infrastructure with gates and fences in platforms, similar to Chiasso nowadays.

Must admit I was surprised to see those fences at Chiasso, some 20+ years after the start of Schengen.