A picture of a gamer-y laptop sitting on the tray table of a first class seat in a Deutsche Bahn ICE train. The screen shows the Woodpecker CI web UI for a pipeline run in the Smoekweb project. It shows multiple jobs, some successful, others not. The most interesting one is called 'ut-db'. It is not a normal job, but a service. Its logs are currently open, and it shows the startup of a Postgres database instance.

Bahn Journey Nr 3: Almost!

It is Deutsche Bahn time again! 🎉 And yet again, I’m traveling from the south of Germany to Ostwestfalen, its most exciting part. And incidentally, also the part of the country where the most competent and ravishly good looking people are born. 😇 At the time of writing, the train is perfectly on time. So I’ve got that going for me. But not all is well in the land of white and red trains. Namely, when I went to ordering myself a nice lunch, the menu only showed drinks. Nothing to eat. The nice waiter assured me that food will be available again starting from Cologne. Which is 1) where I’m going to be switching trains today. And 2), that’s two hours from now. 😭 May the gods have mercy on my undying soul. And my grumbling stomach. ...

April 23, 2026 · 2 min · Michael

Bahn Journey Nr 2: Late, but uneventful

As promised, I will write a report on every train journey I take. This one is about the return journey for my family visit from last time. It started pretty uneventful. No last-minute changes, no cancellations or shortened trains. The first leg, to Dortmund main station, went very well. As usual on that route, it was an older ICE 2. I definitely prefer the seats on the newer ICE trains. The problems started with my train from Dortmund to my final destination. It started out with 20 minutes of delay, and finally left Dortmund with 35 minutes. The only explanation was “Governmental Measure”, which could mean anything. I was a bit sad when I boarded this train and saw that it didn’t have the ultra-modern interior I got to experience during my last train journey: ...

February 15, 2026 · 2 min · Michael

Thank your for Trävelling with Deutsche Bahn

I’m traveling with Deutsche Bahn again, and it’s frustrating again. I decided: Enough is enough. Yesterday’s journey went off the rails before it even began. Instead of just quietly fuming, I decided to write about it. And not just this one. Instead, I decided to write one post about every train trip I take. And not just the bad ones! The good ones as well. It’s just that the bad ones generally motivate me to write more readily. ...

February 13, 2026 · 14 min · Michael