Shocking Results

In Germany, a country revered for its presumed punctuality, it's common for university professors to come late to their own lectures.

This kind of institutionalized nonchalance has even made it into the German vocabulary. It's called the "academic quarter hour" and it's what German students swear by when they press the snooze button on their alarm clock in the morning.

It may be that German academics have the unusual luxury of flying to work because airlines also don't consider a flight "late" unless it arrives at least 15 minutes past schedule.

But according to Stiftung Warentest, Germany's most recognized product tester, unpunctuality begins at four minutes. Since one third of the more than 94,000 trains it analyzed in a study last fall arrived at least four minutes later than planned, the agency has expressed extreme concern over the reliability of the country's rail system.

German punctuality has apparently gone down the train, so to speak.

Think of all the things those poor passengers could have accomplished in those four precious minutes -- drunk half a coffee, tied their shoes, called their mother (well, ok, that would probably take more like 40 minutes).

But, like they say, time is money. So business must be sagging in Dresden, Hamburg and Cologne, where the most punctuality infringements were recorded.

Rail company defends itself

Naturally, German rail company Deutsche Bahn refuted the results, saying that the study was only conducted on 10 percent of its trains over a 30-day period and therefore wasn't representative.

But, unlike Stiftung Warentest, Deutsche Bahn considers four minutes late not really late. For them, late doesn't start until a whopping five minutes beyond schedule, in which case they tallied up a 90-percent punctuality rate.

True or not, at least that’s more like the Germany we thought we knew.