h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK - so here it is. I didn't write a journal yesterday because it was a public holiday here in Germany. I hope I'm excused.

No idea who wins, or where you tell people you're participating, or anything.

But I shall this year (A) Just do the one thread because people complain so much about the threads appearing every day and (B) Try and keep to interesting things about where I live because my life is rather boring at the moment.

So - I shall again attempt to explain where I live to someone who has never been here before.

Today I can tell you that German workmen are not the efficient, hard working types that they are reputed to be.

Firstly, they probably aren't German. They could be Polish or Irish, Turkish, Russian or any kind of African.

Last week they had the pavement up on the side of our road opposite to us. Our electricity still comes from overhead cables and they are preparing to run the electricity supply underground.

They had just about finished on Friday when my husband says he heard a terrible row coming from the crowd of workmen gathered opposite. It seemed that the foreman was yelling at them that they had forgotten something. They had to take up the pavement again and work continued on into Saturday, putting right whatever they had done wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyeMFSzPgGc

Looking forward to learning !

(The Create page for NaJo is at A87880125).

Thanks SF - I was trying to find it on the main Create page, which seems to have dried up last August U14992038.

You may have heard that the Germans are really keen on recycling and sorting their rubbish. This is true.

Now, I was taught to do this as a child; my parents were very strict about not throwing things away if they can be recycled or used otherwise, so they were the first to save things up for bottle banks etc when they were introduced to the UK. We always had a compost heap. But the thinking behind my parents' policy was probably more economy- than ecology-based.

So when recycling was introduced by local councils some 30 years ago it seemed quite normal to me.

My eldest son, (now nearly 34) went on a trip to the rubbish dump with the school when he was about 7. The recycling idea was just being introduced, and even he saw the irony in the way recycling was explained to them: Plastic bottles and containers would be collected separately and recycled into plastic sacks, which would be distributed to households to collect the plastic bottles and containers in....

It seems that every country has gone through a period of first smiling and making jokes about it, and gradually accepting it as normal procedure, to the extent that you would no more throw a used battery in your dustbin than you would put jam on your chips. Even the French are doing it now! (Sorry SF, but it did take a long time, you must admit)


The odd thing is that every council seems to separate things differently. As technology advances, the waste disposal becomes more able to differentiate between the different materials, so perhaps eventually we shall return to one single dustbin and the machines do the sorting!

For the moment however, our local council collects the following categories

- Paper and cardboard (green dustbin)
- Recyclable packaging (Plastics, tins, vacuum packaging..) Nowadays these don't even have to be cleaned very thoroughly
- Garden and kitchen refuse for composting
- Glass
- The rest
- 1 -2 times a year: larger garden refuse, such as hedge cuttings, if bundled and tied
- once a year (+ once per household if called) large stuff such as furniture (Sperrmüll)

The Sperrmüll has always been a street fest. In the winter, people put out the rubbish before it gets dark and as soon as the first clothes dryer hits the pavement, you get scavengers, rag and bone men and just nosey parkers wandering about picking out anything they can make use of or make money out of. Often the bin men who come to collect things the next morning will only find a bit of string and a few broken bits of plastic, or a whole mess where the scavengers have turned over mattresses and opened cupboards, spreading the stuff out into the road.

Nearly all drinks bottles (plastic and glass) have deposits on them and can be returned. You feed them into huge machines outside the supermarkets and get a chit which you can then redeem at the till.

Drinks in cans were off the market for a while, but now these are back on the shelves and, once empty, can be returned with the bottles into the bottle machines. Also the larger yoghurt jars and milk bottles.

The machines read the bar codes, tot up the amount to be refunded and run the glass bottles on a conveyor belt to the warehouse, or crush and deposit plastic and aluminium bottles as they go through.

Batteries, corks, broken electrical gadgets, toxic household waste such as paints, oils, etc., are all treated separately. I'm sure lots of people have given up trying to work it all out, despite the clear instructions available in the local paper and on line.

A visit to the local dump is also fascinating - There's a niche for neon lighting tubes, old computers go here, plastic there, wood there, carpets in that shed. There are always nice people to help you unload things that are too heavy to lift out of the car on your own.

Nowadays most countries have these systems in place, but I would contend that, due to the head start back in the 80s, the Germans make more use of it.

Boston uses single-stream recycling. Everything goes into the same bins, to be separated, apparently, by machine.

Another thing about Germans is that they DO - REALLY! - wait at a pedestrian crossing if the lights are red even if there is no traffic about.

Some crossings even have a sign up reminding people to obey the lights and be a good example to children.

The philosophy behind this is that, according to the German Highway Code (Strassenverkehrsordnung) the pedestrian is just as much a participant in traffic as the juggernaut, the motor cyclist or the mobility scooter. So if everyone sticks to the rules, the amount of accidents can be reduced.

I wonder if I can find some statistics to show whether or not it helps.

Do they have zebra crossings too?

Growing up it was normal for cars to slow down and stop on any road if they saw people waiting to cross even if there wasn't a crossing nearby.

<BB<

There are a lot of people who think that still happens

Deb

Only catching up with this... got to take issue: "German workmen are not the efficient, hard working types that they are reputed to be. Firstly, they probably aren't German. They could be Polish or Irish, ..."

A school friend of mine went to work in Germany, for Lufthansa. He had qualified as an engineer, but like a lot of engineers found himself in management.

Fairly early on, perhaps as long ago as the seventies, he told me that the famous reputation for hardworking Germans was not entirely reliable. If there was no job on hand, the workers would turn up to the office and drink coffee all day.

The ones who looked around and said "Couldn't we be doing x?" were... the Irish workers.

The Irish have always had a reputation for fecklessness, at least back as far as the eighteenth century, with the startling exception of Irish emigrants who did a lot of road and railway building in Britain and the United States, and many did extremely well for themselves. Then suddenly in the 1990s the Irish at home got a taste for making money, and people worked every hour that God gave. The morning rush-hour in Dublin was happening one hour earlier.

In fact fecklessness is an attribute that has no DNA; historically it is shared by all populations that have been dispossessed.

Oh dear - I wasn't trying to say that because the workers are often not German nationals that their attitude is lackadaisical. I was just saying that the "efficient and hard-working" image is well out of date. Germans are lousy at organising and nothing works very well these days. It's not the fault of the people at the end of the food chain, who are no doubt quite conscientious.

The trains don't run on time, either. If they run at all.

Did someone say "food chain"?

German food chain? Must be 'Aldi'

<BB<

The Ballad of Lidl & Aldi http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL7jyXCQ2Zc

I enjoyed that!

Today we were reminded in the local paper of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Trifelsverein.

I could go off at two tangents here: Trifels.. and ... Verein.

The Trifels is a medieval castle about 30-40 minutes drive from here. It was falling to ruins in the 1850s and the Society was formed to restore it, which they did very well, and it is now a centre for hikers, the historically curious and also a venue for concerts, public talks and, probably, weddings etc. The Verein also does research into the hitherto undocumented history of the place.

I have mentioned in previous journals that they steadfastly stick to the legend that this was where Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned on his way back from a Crusade and where his minstrel, Blondel, sang to him from outside to let him know that help was on the way.

As this is not backed up at all by any English historians, I tend to doubt the veracity of that legend, but it brings in the tourists and has helped the place get back on its feet.

So much for that.

The other tangent is the second half of the word: Verein.

In 19th and 20th century Germany, social life, particularly in rural areas, was dominated by the Vereine. These are clubs, societies or associations - including many football clubs which have since become internationally famous. There is a saying which went "Wo zwei Deutsche sich zusammenfinden, gründen sie einen Verein". Put any two Germans together and they will start a Verein.

No village is without its Schützenverein (shooting and hunting club), Männergesangsverein (Male voice choir), Sportverein, Angelverein (fishing club) - all of which may well be over 100 years old. In fact, many of them have celebrated anniversaries over the past couple of decades commemorating their 120th, 150th, or whatever, as the example above illustrates.

Most of these clubs/societies will have the letters "e.V." after their name. This means "eingetragener Verein". They are registered with the council. This status carries rights and obligations with it. The Verein is obliged to submit a Treasurer's report, and to have an AGM at which all the necessary dignitaries have to be voted for and appointed: President, Vice-president, secretary, treasurer etc. They have to provide some sort of service to the community at some point during the year, which often means a stand at the village fete, a local tournament in their chosen sport, or if it's a choir they will sing at a remembrance service at the local cemetery, or provide the entertainment at an official function.

The rights involve mainly a subsidy from the Council for the upkeep of their clubrooms and an occasional visit from the mayor etc., who will often be an honorary member, if he or she isn't a member already.

Many people in a small community will be in more than one Verein.

These days, however, they seem to be dying out. The remaining members are getting older, the numbers are declining. Male voice choirs, where they have managed to survive, only do so by starting a project choir, and certainly they will have let women join in by now. (Most of them will now be conducted by a woman, and the Committee members will be a mixed bunch.)

http://www.trifelsland.de/en/welcome/

I've probably posted this before but here is a link to the Trifels website, in case anyone is interested.

The town I was born in [Clinton, Massachusetts] has a place called Turner Hall, which is the meeting place for the Turnverein, a gymnastic organization at first, which later embraced education, politics, and the labor movement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turners

.. which just goes to prove the saying about any Germans getting together anywhere and they form a Verein.

A German institution is a detective series which has appeared regularly on TV every Sunday evening after the news for some decades now.

Tatort (The scene of the crime)

Personally I think it's lousy. Usually very badly written and easily seen through, using stereotypes and extremely badly written dialogue. So I haven't watched it for a long time, the script usually making me run out of the room gagging.

Never mind. It's an institution the German ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunkanstalten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland) are very proud of and its longevity and popularity, coupled with its huge media coverage every weekend, make it very difficult to avoid.

The ARD is a joint broadcasting company, combining all the local Rundfunkanstalten (Broadcasting Institutes) and so has at its disposal script writers, actors and camera teams in all the major cities.

However, the stories are usually generic and you can go through a whole programme set in a particular city without seeing one landmark from the place itself or hearing anyone speak in the local dialect. Although when they do have some local street person or a police minion who does attempt the local dialect, they usually get it wrong, anyway.

As with most detective series, the problems of the staff in the Crime Investigation squads are the thread running through the series.

The different detectives in their specific towns are broadcast on a rota, giving each team time to think up a story and put together a good evening's entertainment. They come and go, and some become favourites with the public, while others fade away quite soon. Many go on to great careers in acting, either in TV blockbusters, films, or even on to Hollywood or on to another form of international film career.

Often they will try to attract attention by incorporating topical political themes into the storylines, but as the writers and actors can change from episode to episode, there is no set format - some are quite comedic, some very violent, others more controversial, others attracting attention with guest stars, and various other tricks. The hype before each episode guarantees a high viewing rate, and the comments in the press and online news sites following the broadcast do their best to keep the interest up.

The series started in 1970 and tonight they are airing the 999th episode, based in Kiel, about a girl who is converted to Islam and radicalised.