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André Müller * is in his late 40s and has been driving regional trains through Baden-Württemberg as a train driver for Deutsche Bahn for almost 30 years.
»My working day is meticulously timed.
We are told exactly how long we may need for which movement: two minutes are allowed to find out where the vehicle is.
We have four minutes to look at current information on the planned route on a tablet: Is there a construction site there at the moment?
If so, how long is it and how fast can we drive?
Four minutes is far too short for this, which is why I do this work step at home, before the start of my actual working hours.
Then I have less stress on site, because the other time constraints are also tightly calculated: How long we may need to walk to the locomotive.
How much time we have to maneuver.
When I arrive at the parking facility, the cooling water in the vehicle is preheated to 60 degrees and the passenger compartment is preheated.
I then have 23 minutes for the so-called travel time.
I check the brake systems and the air suspension, see whether the vehicle is damaged inside or out and whether everything is working.
Four or five hours of sleep
My working day starts at a different, crooked time every day.
Sometimes it is 2.53 a.m., then 6.03 or 12.06 a.m.
I'll find out the exact times six weeks in advance.
However, I always know a year in advance whether I'm on early or late shift.
For example, I can already say which week in March my early week will be, but I don't yet know whether I will start at three, four or eight o'clock.
Getting up before three o'clock hurts. But actually I really like the early shifts. I can handle four or five hours of sleep. I then lay down on the couch at lunchtime, turn on the TV and doze a little. I find it more stressful that our shifts are of different lengths each day and that we only have two days off every three weeks.
Quiet, quiet, double rest, is the motto: We work five days, then have one day off, work five days again, have one day off and then have to work another five days until we get two days off. I would prefer the work to be distributed in such a way that we have longer periods of rest so that we can really relax. It bothers me less that I don't have a normal Saturday-Sunday weekend. My family and I don't know it any other way. And having time off during the week also has its advantages.
However, I find the twelve-hour shifts that we always have to be very exhausting.
We then work correspondingly shorter on the other days and only have five or seven-hour shifts, but I would much prefer if the weekly hours were evenly distributed.
After all, there must be at least eleven hours between the end of the shift and the start of the shift.
Train driver was never my dream job.
I am a trained machine fitter.
After my apprenticeship, I couldn't find a suitable job, and that's how I ended up with Deutsche Bahn.
Looking back, I'm very happy about that.
I enjoy the work and I am also happy with the pay.
I get around 2300 euros net per month plus allowances.
We get surcharges, for example, for trips at night or on the weekend.
Although the amounts are far from those paid in the auto industry, they are also € 5.64 more per hour.
And if you have 100 hours of night behind you, you even get a day off.
Minus hours in the corona crisis
I don't think we train drivers can generally complain.
So many people were put on short-time work during the corona crisis - we weren't.
We continued to be paid even though we didn't work in some cases.
I know colleagues who have accumulated 260 minus hours, of which 210 minus hours have now expired.
So I have little sympathy for the strike now.
In summer I like to leave the door to the passenger car open.
My bosses don't like that, but when children come along, they are always happy when they can come and see me.
For them I am the hero.
If I drive in the evening, I prefer to leave the door closed.
It can get uncomfortable, especially after wine festivals, when many passengers are intoxicated.
But I drive a part of the country, so the atmosphere is mostly peaceful.
Long-distance traffic has never appealed to me.
Lots of younger colleagues are really keen on driving the ICE and speeding around at 300 km / h, but I like having work on my doorstep.
As a train driver, you can do more in regional transport.
The ICE is guided and many functions are already preset.
I am connected to my colleagues via digital radio, but we are not allowed to chat at work.
Making calls or listening to the radio is also strictly forbidden.
I have already seen how important it is to stay focused at all times: a car was parked on the tracks at an open level crossing.
I was not traveling very fast and was able to brake in good time, so that only a sheet metal damage occurred in the collision, but of course that was still a shock.
We practice such situations in a simulator every two years.
When cows or cars are on the tracks, however, you can hardly do more than brake and press the emergency call.
At least that way, all train drivers who are in the same area are warned. "
* Name changed by the editor.
