I am living the commuter's nightmare: I have to commute across a border. This already complicates a bunch of things:
- My commute takes three hours. 40 minutes of that are a completely unnecessary stop at the border, where the whole train crew changes to a local one just for the final 45 minutes of the ride. I assume this is necessary because the different regulations wouldn't allow a train driver from one country to drive in the other. Or maybe the train companies just want to avoid making their employment contracts more complicated? In any case, it sucks.
- Although there are regularly scheduled trains across this border, every country has its own rebate system and you have to get two different annual train passes to get a discount on every ticket. It doesn't matter which train company the train belongs to, you won't get any discount for the part on the other side of the border. Bonus points: One of the websites will not allow you to specify more than one train pass per person, so it's literally impossible to get a dicount on the full distance if you book through them even if you own both passes.
- As soon as the train crosses the border, the accepted currency in the train restaurant/bar changes. Always make sure to bring the right wallet or you won't be served.
- Long-distance train tickets usually include local transportation here. Of course, that's not the case if you cross a border, so I always have to get in line at the ticket machines at the stations. Yes, even in the city you depart from you cannot travel to the station with your ticket, even though it makes absolutely no sense to treat cross-border tickets differently before you've even crossed the border.
(Bonus points for the people who correctly guess the border from the above description.)
Not to mention that stuff like tax returns, health insurance and the mandatory state pension funds are a nightmare in this scenario. I won't go into details since this is not the topic of this thread, but believe me, it sucks.
In any case, as if the above wasn't already annoying enough, here are a list of completely unnecessary additional annoyances:
- Long-distance trains here have two types of cars: "Quiet" cars in which you're not allowed to talk or use your phone and regular cars. When reserving a seat, you can choose which type of car you want to be in. Guess how often people actually respect the signs. Guess what the train crew does about it. The worst thing I've experienced was a large group of old people who decided to get onto one of the early commuter trains and annoy literally everyone else by talking loudly across the whole car. There was not a single other person there who didn't either have work to do or catch some additional sleep before work (the Monday morning train leaves my place of residence before 6am) and they didn't care at all.
- The two train companies cannot even agree on a common system for checking train passes. I get that they want to check the tickets again after the border and personnel change, but I once almost got fined for travelling without a ticket because I only had the in-app train pass available (scannable QR code), but not the physical card. One company's ticket scanner can scan those QR codes as well while the other's only accepts QR code tickets. Why the hell did they cooperate to make sure the tickets scan on both sides of the border, but completely ignore the train passes that you have to show together with the ticket? Not to mention that this train pass - as mentioned above - didn't even give me any discount on their side of the border.
- The part of the route behind the border frequently gets cancelled (both ways) to make up for a delay. This seems to happen every time the train is more than 20 minutes delayed (which can absolutely happen, considering the complete route of most trains between my residence and my workplace is more than 800km long). What if that train happens to be the last one of the day? Sucks to be you! And guess when your app will inform you that the last train has been cancelled? 1 hour earlier, at the exact time the previous train is already leaving the station.
(Bonus points for everyone who can guess the exact route now.)
Luckily, I'm only a weekend commuter. If I had to deal with this every day, I'd probably have a stroke within the next 3 months.