It's unfortunate what happened to DB over the years. I last rode a DB fast train in 2018. We just stopped in the middle of a field for no announced reason for 70 minutes. I missed my international flight home as a result. I haven't rode the DB since, and hear it has only gotten worse.
I was on a lovely fast smooth ICE Sprinter to Berlin last week. All was going well until they announced that the train would terminate at Erfurt (roughly half way) because… who knows?!
These days, a DB journey that doesn’t involve some sort of disruption is the outlier.
