How a knitted scarf expressed the silent rage of German commuters
The French have their gilets jaunes. Now, the Germans have their own icon of provincial commuter angst: the Verspätungsschal, or “delay scarf ”.
Claudia Weber is a clerk in a travel agent’s office in Munich who decided one day to knit a scarf representing delays to her daily train journeys. She knitted a blue line for no delay, grey for a fiveminute delay, pink for half an hour and red for longer.
As the year wore on, the scarf grew pinker and redder. By the end of last summer’s rail replacement services due to repairs, it had amassed a great block of solid red.
What Ms Weber couldn’t have known was how strongly her efforts would strike a chord with Germany’s angry commuters. The post about her knitwear’s unique brand of German kitsch-cum-activism went viral. So her daughter put the scarf on ebay in aid of charity and, to their astonishment, it sold for €7,550 (£6,610). Germany’s national rail operator, Deutsche Bahn, has just released figures showing that only 77 per cent of its long-distance trains were on time last year. For all we hear about German efficiency and prudence, the country is suffering from years of under-investment and commuters are increasingly fed up. The shame of being late in Germany is no joke.
Inconveniently for advocates of
Rail users are fed up. The shame of being late in Germany is no joke
nationalisation, Deutsche Bahn is fully stateowned. It is meant to operate independently of government and has to bid for contracts, but its only shareholder is the German federal government.
In other words, whatever the ownership structure, if you don’t maintain your trains, they will go off the rails.