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In Germany's defense, if you miss a train connection due to delays, you just board the next connection without needing to have your ticket re-issued for another connection, which is cool.
But the joke is real, I was coming back from Spain to Poland by train recently and everything was fine, until my VERY FIRST STATION IN GERMANY where I got my first delay.
I just read that every 10th train voming from Germany into Switzerland is late, and they don't wait anymore, because they mess up the rest of the route.
Yes, there is a standby train in Basel, for when the ones coming from Frankfurt are delayed again.
Switzerland has an integrated cyclic schedue, and relatively tightly planned line utilization so delays can cascade pretty strongly.
Its better for the system at whole to send the standby within the scheduled slot of the German train, have that train return from Basel to Frankfurt directly (making up time in the process so the way back is regular), and people who wanted to go to Zürich have to get off and use the next train to Zürich half an hour after the standby, in the next regular slot.
The downside is cost of the standby train and situations like this: Last time I had to change in Basel myself, and had to guide an older lady and carry her suitcase, because she was quite confused by the sudden unplanned change of trains. Then she talked my ear off on the way from Basel to Zürich :-)
Yep, same for Austria. "Punctual as the German railway" used to be an unironic figure of speech in the 80's and early 90's. Once they started privatizing, everything went to shit.
Germany is strange. Their economy is one of the strongest in the world but if you want to move around reliably in the country you need a horse.