By: Jason Yang

In Germany, travel can be unpredictable. One moment you get onto a train almost instantly, the next, you wait in an extremely long line. Getting to this summer’s European soccer championships is no exception. During the games, the train stations are filled with fans in and out, making it very hard to get on the trains on time.

Niclas Füllkrug, who was one of the soccer team’s forwards, decided to make the long journey from his house in Hanover by train on the country’s national railway carrier, Deutsche Bahn. The problem? Years of failure to invest in stock meant that upgrading railways and digitalizing signal boxes were not possible, so Deutsche Bahn is well-known for delays and cancellations.

Füllkrug was not surprised when he found himself stuck in a train with a bunch of high school students on a trip. He spent the whole time answering their questions about life. When the soccer fans crowded onto the trains, the rail networks struggled. On June 14, staff were told to hand out ice pops to the overheated travelers stuck in the trains. They were in such a hurry to get out of the train stations that some people even turned back to get out of the station faster.

Late arrivals for one train causes a domino effect on all other trains as well. According to Deutsche Bahn, only 63 percent of the trains arrived on time last month. The critics blame a lack of investment in the decades since the company was formed as a private company back in 1994, connecting the railways of East and West Germany. Andreas Knie, a professor at the Berlin Social Science Center, says, “It has long been strategically clear that there is lack of money. The sums that should have been invested in the railroads, as a rule of thumb, should have been twice as high as what was actually invested.”