> In Germany, people complain when the train is late. Everywhere else, the train is just late.

You think people don't complain when the train is late in other countries? That's hardly a uniquely German thing

To be honest, I complain more often when the train is on time.

IIRC DB currently has a worse punctuality record than the UK rail network. That takes some doing.

The Swiss nervously check the time when a train is 2-3 minutes late. When a train is late, the situation is basically on the brink of a national emergency.

In my experience this is often commiserate with an announcement that the service is late due to it’s arrival from [Germany, Italy, France].

I am currently living abroad, but I come from northern Italy. Rest assured that we complain a lot about our trains being late.

I mean I've regularly seen trains in germany arriving AFTER the next train. Statistically they are worse than pretty much any european country.

And outside of trains, my german friends run the gamut of being always on time to systematically being 30 minutes late. Don't really see much of a correlation between being German and punctual.

Japan on the other hand I do associate with punctuality, when I worked there I was made to sit in the seiza postion for the m9rniny meeting if I was late by even 3 minutes. My friends there were overwhelmingly ontime except (and proving my point) for a German coworker I had there :)

This is not true, people complain a lot in France when the trains are late.