Thought your fellow seat is always blocked (my wasn't this morning because of a last minute change from Avro to a CRJ100, what also caused a delay of one hour...).

But overall I agree with CalFlyer's post. Travelling in the so-called "open saloon cars" (=Grossraumwagen) in Germany during peak hours in unbearable. Unlike the Swiss railways, the Deutsche Bahn missed yet to introduce real quite carriages on their long-distance trains. Since I was sitting once near to an Italian business-man in the only first class coach of an ICE between ZRH and MUC some years ago, I never took this train again (fortunately, there are six-seat-compartment coaches again on this route - I really don't cry for the diesel-ICE-trains...).

And again ^ for the desicion of LH to not introduce this nuisance on it's planes.

Patrick