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There is no default, until recently it always showed both the reduced and full price, but you always had to manually select what you want on the 2nd screen. An

There is no default, until recently it always showed both the reduced and full price, but you always had to manually select what you want on the 2nd screen. Anyway, I'm neither German nor Swiss, but I think there are certain prejudices about both countries. Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip. I made the mistake recently of not booking my train from Switzerland in advance because I didn't know when I exactly need to go and figured what the hell, I'll just buy it when I figure it out. Big mistake, almost everything was booked out, and I barely made it home. Also, SBB likes to complain about DB, and there might be truth to some criticism, but realistically the two companies don't solve the same problems, in terms of passenger count, distances traveled and overall complexity.

dgellow 5y ago
At least in Switzerland the discounted system for fixed-trips is relatively recent (admittedly I left the country a while ago so we may be talking about a different time frame). I didn't mean to say one way or the other is bad (your use of "prejudices" has a negative connotation, which isn't what I wanted to highlight). I'm Swiss, lived there for ~25 years, and now live in Germany since a good amount of time. And it was funny to observe this difference in expectations and behaviours between the two countries. I've never seen SBB/CFF complain about Deutsche Bahn so I'm not sure what you mean here. I personally like both groups, their services are really good IMHO. > Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip I mean, I can generally agree here, but the German approach to saving money is waaaay more extreme than what I've experiences living in other countries! People book their trips like 6 months in advance to have some reductions, and will use every single way to save a few cents! (Note that I'm from the French speaking side of Switzerland, which is culturally quite different from the German speaking side)

dgellow 5y ago

At least in Switzerland the discounted system for fixed-trips is relatively recent (admittedly I left the country a while ago so we may be talking about a different time frame). I didn't mean to say one way or the other is bad (your use of "prejudices" has a negative connotation, which isn't what I wanted to highlight). I'm Swiss, lived there for ~25 years, and now live in Germany since a good amount of time. And it was funny to observe this difference in expectations and behaviours between the two countries. I've never seen SBB/CFF complain about Deutsche Bahn so I'm not sure what you mean here. I personally like both groups, their services are really good IMHO. > Germans might look to save money, but realistically everybody needs to plan their trip somewhat in advance, unless it's a short weekend trip I mean, I can generally agree here, but the German approach to saving money is waaaay more extreme than what I've experiences living in other countries! People book their trips like 6 months in advance to have some reductions, and will use every single way to save a few cents! (Note that I'm from the French speaking side of Switzerland, which is culturally quite different from the German speaking side)