Branches were made by copying the directory tree, and svn doesn't have local commits so it always went straight to the server.

I think svn also originally didn't have merging, or at the very least it was such a bad experience svnmerge.py was created and really common to use. Even once it got good it was mostly the equivalent of using git cherry-pick to pull commits across branches, though it did get a special "reintegrate" mode for diffing a branch and applying that back to trunk (and I remember there being something about it being possible to accidentally undo commits if you weren't fully up to date when running it...?)

Edit: I remember now, all changes on trunk had to be merged into your branch first, or reintegrate would interpret it as if your branch undid those commits and remove the changes from trunk. It basically made trunk look exactly the same as the branch did at that moment.

I know what you mean, when git was gaining popularity I do remember people saying that branching being better/easier in git. I do think it was overstated back then and just not true. I haven’t used svn in years as well, but I think it was mostly due to the hype than any objective merit.