Originally Posted by
Analise
Yup, I clicked on "Delay Notifications". I was also logged into my account. This is a problem I hope they remedied.
If there are no delays, then obviously, you shouldn't see anything there. But, if you have trips planned, then you'll need to check. Hopefully, you might also get a push notification or some other signal.
I heard the English translation on the DB much more often when I was in Germany 2 years ago.
For stations in smaller cities, there were only German announcements. On my ICE train between FRA and Hannover, the only English spoken by the conductor was a welcome when boarding at FRA and then the arrival notification at Hannover. Cities in between never had anyone speak anything but German. On my train between Berlin and Leipzig, again I only heard English announcements when boarding at Berlin and disembarking at Leipzig — nothing in between. The same applies on the return trip to Berlin that day from Leipzig.
As a rule, when a train approaches a station, they will announce the station and the other destinations available from that station, including the track number and time when the train to those destinations leaves. There are very few other announcements, in my experience.
So I found it strange that if a conductor managed to make an English announcement when arriving in Frankfurt, why not include the information that the train we were on was terminating in Frankfurt and that those going further south needed to disembark and then tell them to which platform they needed to go.
I would expect more regional trains to be German-only. That ICE practically was German-only surprised me.
I take the ICE fairly often to Cologne, the conductors are always Dutch-speaking Germans or German-speaking Dutchmen. Other than the station announcements I mentioned above, I don't recall ever hearing any announcement of a change in schedule or destination that hasn't been made in all three languages.