even if your family has no justifiable basis for believing what they do about DB, they happen to be correct by luck.
https://ibir.deutschebahn.com/2023/en/combined-management-re...
right now if you want to go between two cities you always have to plan on missing your connection.
I feel most know about Japan's shinkansen being run well.
For those who don't, the average delay is 1.1 minutes on average.
For comparison, the DB long distance trains are considered on time if they're less than 6 minutes late, and still only 64% are considered on time.
They have dedicated tracks. In Germany all train lines (freight, local trains, long-distance trains) share the same tracks and especially at different speeds this causes delays and problems.
Building new track or even adding more lanes is extremly difficult because of NIMBY's and from 1995 to 2005 switches and extra lanes for overtaking where build back to save costs.
Additionally signalling is in large parts still very labour intensive and smaller tracks are often still running with technology from the early 20th century and late 19th century.
So the problem Deutsche Bahn has to solve is quite a bit harder than shinkansen.
I have family in Germany and they never go by train but tell me regularly about how bad the train has become. They have literally not been in one for 15+ years. But they watch the news every day.