The experience can differ drastically between cities / regions. In Munich, most people are indeed silent except for Oktoberfest when all hell breaks loose at Ha

The experience can differ drastically between cities / regions. In Munich, most people are indeed silent except for Oktoberfest when all hell breaks loose at Hackerbrücke. In Berlin, most are also silent, but sometimes a dude with a trombone casually joins the train and starts blasting on a normal tuesday. :P Some local networks have modern, nice trains. Others still operate designs that are from the late 60s and sound like a circular saw (e.g. the old S-Bahn trains or the Metro system in Munich). Some have nice seats and toilets in their S-Bahns, others have no toilets and super hard seats. Some have modern, high platforms with barrier-free access, others still use very low platforms and small diesel-powered carriages from the early 80s. Some operators clean the trash inside the train regularly during the day, others... don't. Some networks / lines are at (or even severely over) capacity, some are not. There is no universal "german public transport experience", IMO. Maybe GP just lives in a region with old and neglected rolling stock. :) Long-distance trains are (almost) all operated by DB Fernverkehr and thus there aren't such extreme differences.