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

I wrote a huge journal yesterday and it disappeared when I pressed "Store Journal".

So, dear Reader, you can be thankful for that. I'm writing it again, but probably shorter!

As I mentioned in the Film thread, we went to see a film on Sunday evening - "The Physician". This, according to Imdb is only on release in Germany and Spain so far. It's based on the book by Noah Gordon and those who have read it aren't happy bunnies. Whatever: I hadn't read it. The story takes place in the 11th Century and it's about a young boy who is fascinated by healing and what the human body looks like inside. He overcomes many barriers - almost all of them religious - to pursue his aim to get the best possible training in medicine and travels to Isfahan where Ben Kingsley, the world's best healer, lives and works, and becomes his best student.

No mention is made in the film of how he manages to communicate in all the foreign countries he passes through. At the end, he is reading and writing Arabic and has to convince the Jewish community that he can read and speak Hebrew and knows all the religious rites, as Christians are outlawed in Arabia. But everyone speaks English in the film. Well, I think they do - we saw the dubbed German version, of course.

It was a good evening out - the film was very atmospheric, with the typical brown and grey colour scheme of medieval films and Stellan Skarsgård and Ben Kingsley gave it credibility. The story was simple, (obviously the book had been relentlessly pared down), and had a solid beginning, middle and end, with little scenes to laugh and cry at.

Most of the original journal that got lost was about the parking situation in Speyer on Sunday evening. By all accounts it was impossible to park anywhere in town - and even out on the outskirts, the cinema carpark was full to bursting and we had to drive around until a film finished and some people came out and created spaces for us! This is unheard of - normally we go on a Sunday evening and are rattling around with about 5 other people in the cinema.

Monday was even worse - on this side of the Rhine, the 6th January is not a holiday, but over the river, in Baden-Württemberg, it is - so they all flood into Speyer and other towns on the left bank of the river to go shopping. The whole town, all the bridges and even the back streets were gridlocked!

So, on a holiday, are the shops open? You seem to be implying that the Baden Wurtemburg people are off work but can't go shopping in their own region, so they invade your region.

In Ireland, the shops tend to open in the afternoon on holidays, and they would be absolutely packed with people, as when Irish people are looking for something to do, they go shopping.

Wet Sunday afternoons are the worst - we're only about a mile from a major shopping centre and all the roads around our area are clogged up with people queuing for up to an hour to get into the shopping centre.

On the issue of knowledge in the Middle Ages, we were always taught in Irish schools that the Irish kept civilisation going during the Dark Ages (end of the Roman Empire to about 1000 AD) by having a very strong monastery tradition. The monks valued learning, continued to speak Latin, and copied old manuscripts so that the knowledge in them was not lost. Later, the Irish founded colleges in Britain and on the continent to spread the knowledge.

While this may be true to a certain extent, I think the amount of knowledge which came into Europe from the Arab world was much greater. I've heard that the Arabs translated the ancient Greek works into Arabic, and they were translated from Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages. Certainly, some of Archimedes' work only exists in translations through Arabic.

And the Arabs were experimenting with new stuff at a time when the Europeans were still accepting the words of the ancient philosophers as the definitive view of the world.

Here it's when the Germans have a holiday and the Dutch (or Belgians) dont - then the Germans (a lot of whom throw their hands up in horror a at the idea of Sunday opening or shops being open on a holiday) head to Venlo and Roermond* to do their shopping

Which is why I head to Sittard - a way smaller and prettier town than Roermond - but a bit further away from me (Venlo and Roermond are about 30 minutes drive, Sittard 40 minutes, and Düsseldorf or Köln are 45 minutes) and because it's smaller etc, doesn't get as full.

There's also a big supermarket (which sells Quorn which is great due to the Vegetarian Gruesome) in Venlo which is open on a Sunday. In fact I think I need to drive over this Sunday and stock up (standard list: sandwich bread, Branston Pickle, peanut butter, marmite, extra-strong mints, paracetemol & cold remedies Quorn and Bio-tex)

*there is a designer outlet place there that is always open on a Sunday and it's always packed.

Which states have holidays on which days are decided at state level, I think. Some days are federal holidays:

Christmas Day, Boxing Day, Easter Monday, Ascension Day, Mayday...

But some days are different for each state, depending upon the prevailing religion within that state:

All Saints (1 November), Corpus Christi, Ascension of the Virgin (or whatever it's called in English) on 15 August.

So although much of Rheinland-Pfalz is a Catholic stronghold, much of it is also a strongly protestant state (Even Speyer with its huge Catholic Cathedral and Bishop was quite important in the Reformation, and Worms is also in Rheinland-Pfalz - famous for Luther's trial), so it has a mixture:

Shops shut (holiday) on 1 Nov and Corpus Christi, but not on 15 August or 6 Jan (Ephiphany - German folk name "Heilige drei Könige" - official name "Erscheinung des Herrn".)

Baden-Württemberg has all the Catholic holidays including 6 Jan, but excluding 15 August - Bavaria has them all, including 15th August.

Further North and East, the tendency is protestant and they have a couple of their own protestant holidays: Buß- und Betttag in November (which we used to all have, but they tried abolishing it to improve the gross national product) and Reformationstag on 31 October. This applies to Saxony and partly Thuringia and other states right out in the North East.

And regarding the science and medicine in the Arabian world in the Middle Ages, I think Jim Alkalili has done a little towards making us aware of this - have you read his book?

So the big difference between Ireland and Germany is that the shops shut on holidays in Germany. In Ireland, the shops open any time they think they can make a sale. Up to recently, some of the big supermarkets were open 24 hours a day every day except Christmas Day. With the recession, they've cut back and now they're shut between 11pm and 8am, and they close on some more of the holidays too.

Shops selling clothes will generally open in the afternoons on holidays (except Christmas Day) because that's when most people want to buy.

I never realised Ireland had shops open all the time. When can you buy alcohol?

I think the states that have Reformationstag (31st Oct) don't have All Saints (1st Nov)? we don't have Buss & Bettag any more (boo) and we don't have 15th August either (boo). If I lived in Austria my birthday would be a holiday (yaayy)

I'll be interested to see when you can buy alcohol in Ireland. Here you can buy alcohol at petrol stations which I just find plain .

Also, on Good friday (starting at 00:01 in the night from Thursday to Friday until 23:59 on Good Friday) no music is allowed in public places. Which always used to strike me as weird in the heavy rock pub we used to go to. The drinking went on until 6am as usual but no music. Also

Alcohol is restricted. You can buy it from 10am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and more restricted hours on Sunday - I think it is 12:30pm - 10pm. You can't buy alcohol on Good Friday or Christmas Day.

The most restricted is cigarettes. You can't advertise them. All cigarettes must be sold in plain white packets with a giant health warning on them, and can not be on display in the shop - they have to be in a special container behind the counter, so that the packs aren't visible to the customer. The container itself can't say on the outside what is in it.

At a music festival, you can have a booth selling cigarettes, but you can't put up any sign to say that that is what you're selling.

I've often wondered about the plain cigarette packaging, I hadn't realised it had already been introduced in Ireland.

Because the Tobacco industry spend lots of money on the design and on advertising (here only poster advertising is allowed, and in cinemas, not on TV as far as I know) saying that it differentiates their product. And then one of their counter arguments to plain packaging is that, meh, it won't make any difference because consumers don't buy for the packaging.

Or maybe I dreamt that

There are many other rules that make a holiday a holiday in Germany. The shop opening times are very strictly regulated, as Sho and I have often mentioned in other threads.

- Lorries/HGV are not allowed to use the roads between 10 pm from the day before and 10 pm on the day, except for fresh foods deliveries.
- Train and bus timetables run on the Sunday schedules, with Sunday prices, if applicable
- No work that involves noise or visible signs of manual labour is allowed (privately or publicly - so that includes not only the dustbin men or road repair workers, but private washing of cars and mowing of lawns or re-tiling of rooves)
- On the day before a holiday you are obliged to sweep the street fronting your property so that it looks nice when people go for walks
- Consumption of cakes and coffee increases as everyone visits relatives or neighbours and has long-drawn out coffee-and-cake sessions
- Only those in services work. (Hospitals, public transport, theatres, restaurants, hotels.)
- Pub opening times are different, I think - but these vary from establishment to establishment with so many factors playing a role.

I think the tobacco companies have turned their eyes away from Europe for some time anyway. It's a lot easier to screw profits out of less regulated countries in the third world with no fussy laws against selling to children, or health education campaigns, or too much taxation or advertising bans.

Perhaps they think of Europe as a coal mine that's largely fully exploited. They'll still take what they can still get from it, of course, but they've found better returns elsewhere.