They also have a route planner for almost whole Europe that is super-fast. Would be interesting to read howabout it's built.

Isn't that all still done by Hafas? I remember when their web site redirected the search to "reiseauskunft.hafas.de" (late 90s?)... Where you actually got a Postscript program when you used the print function in a Linux browser.

Sadly it's pretty rare to find something like a "technology blog" on any German corporate website, apart from a few startups.