Punctual Delays

As I write these words (which I will post later, as I am not connected right now), I'm sitting on an ICE train from Koeln to Hannover. But the train is not moving; we've been stuck at Hamm station for the past 15 minutes and the forecast right now is that we won't be departing for
another 15.

And this is by all means not a first for me. In the past few months I have witnessed train delays in Germany at least half a dozen times. A couple of them were delays of more than 30 minutes and on one occasion almost 1.5 hours! In my four and a half years in Japan I recall only one delay and that one was for only a few minutes. And I travelled by train almost every day in Japan...

True, the Japanese might at times take their punctuality to extremes, but they've left the "punctual" Germans eons behind. I pity those football fans who paid hundreds of Euros for their ticket and will be late to the game because of Deutsche Bahn.

[Update: the delay turned out to be 1 hour...]