He is now being investigated for his failure to purchase a ticket. He also faces proceedings for "disruptive behaviour" - which, however, is only considered a misdemeanour.
Fun fact: In Germany, failure to buy a train ticket is a felony (called "fraudulent acquiring of service") which can lead to prison time. The law was introduced by the Nazis.
Quote by Lenin: "Germans are incapable of revolution. When they occupy a train station, they first buy a ticket."
- Not buying a ticket ("Erschleichen von Leistungen") is a crime, but it's not a felony ("Verbrechen").
- that last quote really hits home. germans are so focused on rules, they forget that sometimes people don't follow them...
  last year i travelled by train from austria to sweden on the cheapest possible tickets, and when i went to board the ICE in münchen at 02:00 there were no free second-class seats. people were sleeping in the vestibules. so i went to the DB site, noticed that seat reservations were independent of ticket purchases, found a free first-class seat, and booked it. the conductor was incredibly mad at me, because "you can't do that! you have a second-class ticket!". there wasn't even a notice about it on the DB site, it just lets you do it. but you're not supposed to.
  Edit: they let me stay in the seat but they were really annoyed about it.
  but like, if the difference between first and second class isn't the seat, in has to be in service. just not giving me first class service solves the problem.
  
  So you booked a seat in first class with a second class ticket?
  
  yes. you could even book a seat without having a ticket. it was completely separate flows.
  
  Why would they do it like that? Does the ticket give anything extra? Sounds like a waste of money to buy first class tickets otherwise.
  
  You can make the reservation independent of the ticket/fare payment. You're still supposed to have a ticket for the class of service you want.
  Paying for a seat reservation doesn't pay the 'fare'
  
  I've never seen it before but were just given examples, DSB being one.
  I find it strange to manage tickets separate from seats. Why not keep them linked?
  
  Because of things like monthly regional passes.
  
  those are a different kind of train where i live. regional trains have mostly passes (that also work on buses), intercity trains do not.
  
  It's mostly because you can have tickets that are not bound to a specific train. Aside from things like monthly tickets you can also have tickets for a single ride, which have a fixed start and end station, but you can take any train on the booked day. When you don't know beforehand, which train you will take, you can still reserve a seat as soon as you decide (even just before the train leaves)
  
  So what was the outcome? Did they let you stay in the seat? Or if not did you get a refund for the seat?
  
  they said "i guess you can sit there, until someone who reserved the seat comes along"
  which was weird because i reserved the seat for the whole trip
  
  Why should they? They reserved him a seat in first class. It's not their fault that he didn't have a first class ticket.
  You can always buy a first class ticket or pay a surcharge for upgrading your ticket to first class
  
  they didn't know what to do, but by their own admission they couldn't really stop me from sitting in the seat i had reserved. they were just really annoyed about it.
  
  Yeah that's the part I don't believe. I have seen people getting fined or charged the upgrade for this many times. Maybe they were nice to you because you were a tourist. But they could definitely have made you pay, or call the police to remove you from your seat and get your personal information
  
  but... why? i reserved the seat. there were no seats available in the rest of the train. would they rather i sat on the floor?
  there was an older woman who tried to sleep next to the door in an adjoining car. she had to move every time the train stopped. that seems insane to me.
  
  It's pure bullshit. We've told ourselves "things must be this way for efficiency", yet we've merely commoditized casual cruelty.
  
  People who like trains with Mandatory Reservations are People who never take the train regularly
  
  disagree.
  
  You reserved the seat, but didn't have a valid ticket for first class. So yes, either stand,sit on the floor until another seat becomes available, have a meal in the dining car, or take another train if you have a flexible ticket. (You don't need a reservation to board the train, and some people travel on season tickets or flexible fares where you can choose freely any train).
  If you want to be guaranteed a seat buy a reservation in your class
  You can pay a surcharge to upgrade your ticket. But the seat reservation just reserves a seat, not the right to travel in that class or on that train without a valid ticket. It's not linked to a ticket or a name
  Most people also prefer to sit on the floor or stand than to not travel on that service and be forced to wait an hour or two
  In other countries like France, Italy or Spain it's like Airplanes on their long-distance services, everyone with a ticket is assigned a seat. And the reservation is linked to the ticket. But in central Europe we fortunately don't do it this way (with the exception of Poland and Sweden).
  (In France and Spain they do this even on some regional services, but their national operators forget sometimes that they are Railways and not Airlines)
  
  i want to add that this was a long-haul night train (münchen to hamburg), so no dining car, few stops, and a travel time of about 9 hours. in that circumstance, selling more tickets than there exists seating seems negligent. the bathrooms were all closed, there were no sleeping cars, there was a police inspection at four in the morning, people were propped up against every wall in the train trying to sleep in peace... it is without exception the worst experience i've ever had on a train, and i was once stuck in jörn for four hours in a train car without electricity in -30 weather. i don't understand how the separate reservation system is better in any way.
  
  You know there is a Long Haul Night train between Munich and Hamburg with real Beds, Showers and complimentary breakfast. Or sleeping Pods if you're on a budget.
  Check it out the next time. Nightjet.com
  It's operated by the Austrian state railways
  Otherwise the separate reservation system makes international train ticketing easier and allows for greater flexibility.
  “hey, you need a first-class ticket for a seat reservation in first class”.
  That's just common knowledge in most of European Countries. I can understand that this might confuse visitors who are used to air travel
  
  Can you honestly justify seats in the first class being left empty, while people in the second class have nowhere to sit? There's so many ways to improve the situation here without anyone actually being hurt. Can't we all take a step back and see how crazy this actually this?
  
  we were trying to keep costs down, the total trip had something like 15 changeovers, three in germany, and cost us €800.
  i am european, i mostly travel by train, and we have mandatory seat reservation at no charge for intercity trains. if you don't select a seat, one is assigned to you. when there are no more seats, no more tickets are sold.
  it would never in a million years occur to me that people would be left without a place to sit for a nine hour trip. that's just inhumane.
  also, it would never in a million years occur to me that you could be fined for buying a ticket and a seat through the official system.
  what you're describing is how regional trains work. not long haul express trains.
  
  Of course they could have and this has led to people being removed from the train by the federal police (which is extremely costly as the German Bahn charges one for the delay costs and the police also charges one).
  When you reserve a seat it means you have the right to use that reservation for 15min after the train left the station and not be moved from it when you have a taken the seat. The reservation even is void if you decide to sit in another seat before claiming your seat or go to the restaurant before claiming your seat.(Afterwards it's different)
  And of course you still have to have a ticket for the class/train. By your logic you could have simply reserved the seat for 4€ and then used no ticket at all - which is of course also wrong.
  BTW: It says you need a valid ticket for that class in bright red letters on the webshop.
  TLDR: You could have been removed from that seat and it would have cost you a lot of money if they did.
  
  it didn't when i took that train. instead of warning people they should just require a ticket for a reservation.
  that reservation footnote is very strange to me. here it's fine to sit wherever as long as you move when someone comes along with a seat reservation. then you can go back to your reserved seat.
  
  Yes because a seat reservation doesn't free you from the requirement of having a valid ticket for the desired class.
  It's the same in nearly every European Country on trains without mandatory reservations
  I would say this is not about Germans being rule focused but you being just used how things work in Air travel
  
  Their point is that any ticketing website in any other country would have the checks built in to not allow it. It's like an airline showing the first class seats as avaient in the seating chart when you bought an economy ticket.
  
  You can have a weekly/monthly/whatever ticket that lets you ride any train inside the area of validity. The seat reservation system doesn't have a way to 'check' those types of tickets.
  You can also book a 'rail and fly' ticket on DB that lets you take the ICE /anywhere/ in Germany 24h before/after your international flight, but doesn't check your airline ticket because it can't - you need to show the ticket inspector your confirmed booking (paper or phone) when they check your ticket.
  If you don't have a valid booking to show, they will charge you a full fare ticket, or call the cops to remove you and fine you.
  
  No you can buy a reservation without a train ticket in
  Germany
  Austria
  Switzerland
  Czech Republic
  Hungary
  Sweden
  (France)
  Slovakia
  Denmark
  And probably more countries, thats just the ones I know from my memory where this is possible
  It’s like an airline showing the first class seats as avaient in the seating chart when you bought an economy ticket
  No it's not, because the reservation is a separate service. You can buy it from the train operator but you might have obtained your ticket from your own national train company, or you bought it later on, or you have a flexible ticket and don't know if you will make this train and it's busy (your right to your seat goes away after 15 Minutes of departure), or you buy it for someone in your family. It's just easier to not have this check included. Everyone in these countries knows that you still need to own a valid ticket for this class for the reservation.
  
  I've never been able to buy a reservation without a ticket. It is usually buy ticket -> buy seat is you want one or get a random one if not. Perhaps 20 years ago but not today.
  Edit: if train ride continues with another company, seat is still managed in my experience.
  
  I’ve never been able to buy a reservation without a ticket
  It's directly on the landing page of bahn.de
  
  Or here in the Swiss Railway App, to give another example ("Nur Sitzplatzreservierung" means "Just Seat Reservation")
  
  And the other carriers in the list I've made above allow it as well
  It is usually buy ticket -> buy seat is you want one or get a random one if not. Perhaps 20 years ago but not today.
  No, not buying a seat doesn't guarantee you a seat on the train. Only if there is one available, which is the case most of the time (only during very busy services/timesthere might be no seats available (e.g. December 23)) That's not how countries with trains without mandatory reservations work. And that's the majority in Europe
  
  doesn’t guarantee you a seat
  This is why I said usually.
  SJ (Sweden) and VY (Norway) did not have this option. DSB (Denmark) does. How strange to allow only buying seats instead of changing an existing booking.
  Edit: looked at https://jegy.mav.hu/ and could not find the option to buy only seats. It seems like this way of handling tickets is intermittent.
  
  MAV offers it too (the last option on the bottom)
  Sweden and Norway are countries with global price ticketing (Mandatory Reservations, integrated with Ticket/ SCIC-IRT), Denmark and Hungary not, so no surprise there (SCIC-NRT)
  I don't think it's strange, it gives just more flexibility.
  EDIT: Also it's nearly impossible to do international ticketing to Global Price Countries with more than a change or outside selected connections, whereas such problems don't exist in Countries that use SCIC-NRT, another Reason why Trains with Mandatory Reservations suck
  
  I didn't look hard enough out seems. :-)
  
  i basically never fly these days. i am just confused why i could even buy a reservation for a different class the begin with.
  
  Because they don't check anything, you can walk up to a counter or ticket machine and get a reservation without any personal or other details required
  
  yeah that's my point, it's super easy to bypass the system and they just assume you won't. but if you don't know how the system is supposed to work it's hard to do it right.
  
  There is no bypass.
  Your seat reservation doesn't entitle you to travel on that train in this class without a valid ticket. You will get a fine if you try to travel with just a seat reservation. And if you don't pay or are catched multiple times they will initiate criminal proceedings against you
  
  Are you saying that you can buy a reservation without a ticket? That the act to buying a ticket and buying a reservation are two distinct actions?
  
  Yes, that's the case
  
  I saw your other comment. I've never seen that before.
  
  That is actually a necessity:
  To buy a reservation as an add-on after buying a ticket
  If you're traveling on a disability certificate, an Interrail ticket or you use BahnCard 100 (i.e. a yearly flatrate ticket)
  
  but what's the difference between first and second class except the seat? why not make a seat reservation require a ticket?
  
  The seat (more comfortable, more space) ist the main difference.
  Of course they could check if you have a ticket at the time of purchase, they just don't. When buying a seat reservation it's clear it's not a ticket.
  
  but just entering the ticket number when doing a reservation would be so incredibly easy to add. as it is now, i can buy up seat reservations without even being on the train, forcing multiple people to stand.
  
  It's more complicated because there's also time limited (or even unlimited) tickets/passes, but I agree it could be done.
  Seat reservations expire 15 minutes after passing the station. By now all trains have those small displays on the seats which show reservations. They simply turn off after 15 minutes, indicating the seat can be taken by anyone.
  
  There are less seats in the carriage, it is more comfy, you get at-seat dining service, free newspapers, faster Internet, more generally people who behave better and are more quiet, and if you have a flexible ticket Lounge Access
  
  That is not clear
  
  What is not clear?
- And those trains will be late. Every time.
  Why? Why are they so terrible at having on time trains? Out of everything they do well, why is this seemingly simple thing so terrible?
  
  Because the ministry of transportation has bled the train system dry in favor of building Autobahns for the past 25 years.
  
  In my experience a very large % of delayed trains are "people on the tracks", either people acting stupid or suicide attempts.
- No ticket!
  
  Better!

71 comments