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At least there are trains... and Munich in particular is slightly weird in that the subway (U-Bahn) is run by a municipal company and works very reliably given

At least there are trains... and Munich in particular is slightly weird in that the subway (U-Bahn) is run by a municipal company and works very reliably given the amount of people they're moving, while the suburban trains (S-Bahn) are run by Deutsche Bahn and are often a mess at rush hour. In part that's due to the design flaw of having a massive central bottleneck. Similarly for universities, the quality differs. Go to Munich's technical university and you'll see buildings in the top percentiles. Go to other universities and the substance is easily going to be much older - but then again, Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education. Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining?

LeonidasXIV 7y ago
> Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining? Literally any city in Asia (or at least Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, whose subway company has now branched out to run subways in many parts of the world like Stockholm). In one year of living in Nagoya the subway was late once. That said it has a way more sensible layout than Munich where one failure in a central point does not cascade to paralyze the entire rest of the network. It is not the worst of course, since it is pretty extensive, but routing nearly every single line through Hbf or Sendlinger Tor couldn't ever have been a good idea.
pb82 7y ago
Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education That is true to some extent. However, the noise of the rainwater dripping into many buckets at the central library of the University of Regensburg made it hard to concentrate on anything. That was around 2010. Not sure if the leaky roof has been fixed since. Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.

LeonidasXIV 7y ago

> Generally, I feel like all these complaints need to be measured against what the alternative is. Which cities have a busy subway system where commuters aren't complaining? Literally any city in Asia (or at least Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, whose subway company has now branched out to run subways in many parts of the world like Stockholm). In one year of living in Nagoya the subway was late once. That said it has a way more sensible layout than Munich where one failure in a central point does not cascade to paralyze the entire rest of the network. It is not the worst of course, since it is pretty extensive, but routing nearly every single line through Hbf or Sendlinger Tor couldn't ever have been a good idea.

pb82 7y ago

Germany sets its priorities to a good quality education without student debt, and the buildings themselves don't matter much for the education That is true to some extent. However, the noise of the rainwater dripping into many buckets at the central library of the University of Regensburg made it hard to concentrate on anything. That was around 2010. Not sure if the leaky roof has been fixed since. Wouldn't be surprised if the answer is no.