Deutsche Bahn An amusing history lesson.
I travel a lot to train stations, but never have I heard someone ask, "On which track does the Joseph Haydn train leave?" Trains are sufficiently identifiable by (estimated) departures and (hoped) arrival times and end or intermediate stops and therefore, unlike cats or dogs, they do not need names.
Nevertheless, the Deutsche Bahn decided to "baptize" the ICEs, whereby of course - very creative in this lutherübersättigten year - the anti-Semitic fundamentalist came first and on the train.
Germany's most popular transport company has just announced 25 names for the 2018 ICE trains of the fourth dimension generation. Since the list was published uncommented, it is up to me to reveal what the names mean to the travelers:
In the train Karl Marx one will find the proletarian and the capitalist class instead of the usual first and second. Since the engine driver belongs to the former, it may happen that halfway through he becomes aware of the alienation of his work and throws it down, or even storms into the wagons of the bourgeoisie for the October Revolution. In any case, Karl Marx will be the first to strike in every labor dispute.
By the way, the locomotive drivers of the ICEs Karl Marx and Adolph Kolping are well-known for arguing endlessly about the right way of the working class out of poverty in the company canteen.
You book your trip so better in the ICE Konrad Adenauer, the reliable always drives and to old age to the west.
There will never be any delays with Hedwig Dohm. On the contrary: this train is far ahead of its time.
If you like it a bit loud you can choose between Ludwig van Beethoven (music), Marlene Dietrich, Hildegard Knef (both vocals) and Fritz Walter (drunken, noisy and grudging football fans).
In the trains Ludwig Erhard and Thomas Mann you can finally smoke cigars again!
If I had already had the opportunity to put the present text, then of course completely different - at least during the pleasurable smoking of a cigar - in the wood-paneled and sound-murmuring salon of the train slowly puffing into the Swiss high mountains Thomas Mann to paper, would have the reader hopes - hopefully cake- and coffee-fortified - to fight through the complexity of a course book surpassing (syn) tactical constructions and would - so the intrepid hope of the author - be so excited by the creative power of our German language that he (or she, but on it It was not customary to be careful in the times and in the mind of the writer, who gave his name to the train and to posterity) is quite self-sufficient and of the most innate and confident drive with spirits, depending on their character, their accompaniment and the time they have chosenexpress themselves with varying expressive intensity and vehemence against the linguistic bad habit (which belongs to the Eisenbahnaktiengesellschaft, which despite this legal form of the republic and thus somehow all of us, at irregular intervals but not without a certain reliability, the customers in the the core business activity of the company wished to add to and even outrageously committed verbal bad habits), to observe things and places that are in themselves undoubtedly identifiable, such as at airports and universities, with names of persons who either died long ago and therefore can not defend against it, or who are still in life, but have not achieved anything in the same, who takes their name on their own and without the advertising of a company seeking to carry high technology into the most remote corners of the country all Mouth and then in all the conversational encyclopaedias, can still hope to do so in the near future, that they will still experience it, to paint, though ... Huch, we are already in Davos? I have to get out! Goodbye, the gentlemen.
If you want to be less talkative, but still want to be entertained wittily, you simply go with Erich Kästner or Heinrich Heine. In the latter one does not get an eye at night.
If you want to have it even more fun, you have to wait until the Deutsche Bahn has piloted enough train attendants through an intensive humorous training to let the ICEVicco von Bülow.
Friends of sophisticated humor, however, should definitely avoid the ICE Margarete Steiff, for whom Mario Barth has already expressed his interest ("I've even come up with a joke. 'Stiff', 'Stiff', understand, no?").
Due to the flight experiences of Marie Juchacz and Willy Brandt, these trains are mainly used on the Balkan route, with the ICEWilly Brandt also carrying a ticket issued on other names. But beware: the passenger, who offers so kindly to lift the suitcase in the luggage compartment, could be a spy.
Although Bertha Benz is on the list of Deutsche Bahn, the name is kept free for rail replacement.
Whether Käthe Kollwitz is pleased to name a train in which two times a week soldiers cross the country to know better in case of emergency, what they should then defend?
Anyone who was overwhelmed by Thomas Mann, for whom Albert Einstein is nothing. In any case, I would not come along mathematically and logically this turn and get out prematurely.
In the ICE Elisabeth of Thuringia, the best chance is to be allowed to ride for a while. The conductors here have a lot of compassion. However, Deutsche Bahn will not enjoy this train for a long time, because Hungary also claims it.
The ICE Alexander von Humboldt should be a discovery train, with no fixed route, no fixed destination and no schedule. You just drive off and be surprised, because - with the right attitude - everywhere is interesting.
For the trains named after Anne Frank, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the siblings Scholl, I would be careful and would rather not stay at the end (solution) station.
But seriously, the German Reichsbahn played an important role in the Holocaust. Especially the knowledge of the often day-long deportations of stations in the middle of the former Reichsland make the "We did not know" post-war excuse implausible. There are memorials at some stations, but one often passes by unthinkingly, especially in the station surroundings, which is not an unusual hurry. If calling names for victims of the Holocaust causes them to think about it again or even discuss it with fellow passengers - what the ICE Hannah Arendt in particular offers -, then I think that's a good thing.
Incidentally, I have an insider tip for Deutsche Bahn: If you name a train or train station to Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan will pay the full cost.