Learn Spanish (Spain): Hoy la espera ha sido pésima y encima hemos perdido el tren. - Today the wait has been awful, and on top of that we have missed the train.

Encima adds a negative or frustrating twist. While además just means "besides" or "furthermore", encima translates closer to "on top of that" or "to make matters worse", emphasizing the speaker's annoyance.

Is pésima just another word for bad?

It is the absolute superlative form of mala (bad). While you could say muy mala, using pésima is a stronger, single-word equivalent that means "awful", "dreadful", or "abysmal".

Why are both verbs in the present perfect (ha sido, hemos perdido) if the events already happened?

In Spain, the present perfect is the standard tense for completed actions that happen within a time frame that is not yet over. The word Hoy (today) triggers this, tying the past events to the present.

I learned that perder means "to lose". How does it mean "to miss" in this sentence?

While perder usually translates to "to lose" for physical objects, Spanish uses it to mean "to miss" when referring to transportation like a train, bus, or flight. If you want to say you miss a person, you would use echar de menos instead.