German railways respect Dutch tradition

The city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch is the capital of the Dutch province of North Brabant. It has of one of the oldest and most completely preserved medieval inner cities in the Netherlands. Just one sight which has to be mentioned is the Saint John’s Cathedral. In the city there are many opportunities for shopping for a drink or a meal. The surroundings are worth a visit too, and generally the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch is one of the important centres in the Netherlands.

‘s-Hertogenbosch is colloquially also known as Hertogenbosch or Den Bosch. The official place name has been established by law in 1996. To advocate the traditional name, in 1993 a society has been founded in 1993. It takes care that in maps, telephone books or sign posts are using the correct name. A similar case is the city of ‘s-Gravenhage, which is internationally known as Den Haag, The Hague, La Haye or under other names. For this reason the city itself uses the abbreviated name Den Haag.

The interesting thing about this story is that the Deutsche Bahn (the German railways) does respect this tradition. At least it does that in their ticket machines. When you want to buy a ticket or try to look up a connection, you have to enter a starting station and a destination station. When you´re disrespecting the tradition and try to enter “Den Bosch” or “Hertogenbosch”, the ticket machine ends up completely clueless. But when you try an “S”, among the suggestions shows up a button that reads “s Hertogenbosch”.

The answer to this riddle is that the place names just could be looked up by entering the first letters. You just can achieve something with the part of a place name when this part is just at the beginning. By the way, you can look up The Hague via “Den Haag”, but not via “s Gravenhage”. The Deutsche Bahn is following the Dutch usage here too. There remains just the question what a customer is supposed to do when he doesn´t know the official name of the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch…

Tags: 's-Hertogenbosch, Den Bosch, Deutsche Bahn, Holland, The Netherlands