Erratic Deutsche Bahn services make our commutes a misery. Luckily, their meaningless announcements are an art form
My favourite excuse is an expression that might one day be emblematic of contemporary Germany. I hear Deutsche Bahn wants staff to stop using it, but it can’t banish it from our minds. Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf – “operational delays” – is meaningful and meaningless in a way that only the German language allows. One day it might even become one of those golden words co-opted into the English language – like zeitgeist or schadenfreude. (Let’s retire Blitz, a word that is jaded and overused in sport, politics and beyond.)
Verzögerungen im Betriebsablauf is the magic phrase for not getting anywhere fast while also suggesting everything is full steam ahead. It is sinister in a beautiful way. It is a phrase Kafka might use if he were writing today, a perfect description of a situation where no one can do anything but everyone is busy.
Suicides by train were never announced as suicides. The term before they re-coined it to “Notarzeinsatz am Gleis” (roughly translates to “severe medical emergency near the track”) was “Personenunfall” (accident involving a person).
My point was merely that it would be fine to have a guiding document for acceptable phrasing for events like that for the employees. It would also be fine for things too technically detailed to be understood by most customers for that matter.
The problem arises when you use something like that for things that you shouldn’t be hiding as a company.
That’s exactly the problem, they are using their official phraseology to deliberately obscure everything, and the example with accidents involving persons being coined as “medical emergencies near the track” is one of the most ridiculous ones, because everyone and their cat knows that that obscure phrase actually means that a train has run over someone.