Great, an opportunity to tell the tale of my recent trip to Berlin - please bear with me -
On the outbound as we arrived in Bruxelles on Eurostar it was announced that the Köln train would not be departing from Bruxelles MIdi but from Bruxelles Nord. So the bunch of us who were travelling on had to run around Midi to find a local train that was going to Nord. On arrival there was a huge crowd of people waiting for the train to come in - people going on holiday - babies in pushchairs etc - so as the train came in there was a crush. Although the carriages have display screens showing the coach numbers, when the doors are open these are obscured (or so it seemed to me) so no-one knew where their coach was. We all piled on, and in my case it was about half an hour into the journey before I got to my seat. We continued in cramped conditions, the connection had been held in Köln so I got to Berlin an hour late.
On the return journey, my ICE set off from Berlin on time, but we got to a place called Wolfsburg, possibly, where it was announced that the train was going to sit there for an hour and twenty minutes. This meant I was likely to miss all my connections back to Sheffield. At Cologne, obviously I had missed my connection but the subsequent train had been held and it was the same pile-on-and-try-to-find-a-seat situation.
At Bruxelles, I had missed my connection but Eurostar were brilliant and got me on the next train, which was also running a bit late. I had given up hope of making my connection to Sheffield for which I had allowed 2 hours but as we approached St. P. I realised I had about 7 minutes so I legged it (only having a small rucksack helped) and made it onto my train so by a miracle got back to Sheffield on time.
A few comments: Deutschebahn did their best to maintain connections but there was very little information about what would happen at the next station. I’m sure there was some problem between Bruxelles and Köln but I never got to find out what the problem was despite extensive Googling.There were no real-time timetables available that I could find - I’ve got used to being able to look at National Rail and work out what to do if my train is late but there was nothing like that that I could find for DB. The net result was that instead of being able to relax and enjoy the journey I was constantly worrying about my next connection.
Also, just to make a comment about East Midlands Railways. They seem to be totally focused on running trains on time at the expense of anything else. At St. Pancras last Friday, the 11:02 to Sheffield was running late, so at the last minute, after having boarded the Nottingham service they turfed everyone off it so they could use it for the Sheffield service. As I was going to Sheffield that was great for me, but really, is that any way to treat passengers?
Apologies for lengthy ramblings!