alt Hacker NewsThere are a few tracks that can go faster than 160km/h (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b1/Baanvaks...) but also slower ones. The 80km/h tracks especially have a tendency to make a relatively short journey feel like it takes forever, especially if your train journey includes a trip over the 200km/h segment.
"Gut Ding will Weile haben." / "Haste makes waste."
I've got good memories waiting on the platform in Arnhem for my train back into Germany in the early morning, after a night in the coffeeshops there in the nineties.
Observing all the commuters holding on to their coffee to go, and balancing it in their hands, anticipating the jerky start of these things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Mat_%2764 :-)
Looked hilarious. All in sync. Like orchestrated.
Regarding the percieved slowness, and differences on both sides of the border(at the times?).
When doing the same route by car, your motorways felt supersmooth, even with all the strange markings and traffic signs :-)
Crossing back into Germany toward Oberhausen-> Ruhrpott came the Autobahn made of concrete slabs, and gaps between them. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!.
Very annoying when still 'under the influence' of that grassy green stuff :-)