In the last few days we have assembled quite a few IKEA cupboards and shelves. The worst part of the process is that IKEA sticks an IKEA label onto almost every piece of the kits. The most difficult to remove … Continue reading
The German and Greek views of each other have become increasingly polarised over the last few months. The Greeks are “lazy spendthrifts who retire at 50 (women) or 55 (men) and make a national sport of not paying their taxes”, … Continue reading
Its hard to believe that the Main-Taunus-Zentrum is 47 years old this week. It was the first shopping mall in Germany, and the biggest in Europe when it opened. In 1964 it offered 40000 square meters of shops, over the … Continue reading
It is interesting that every country seems to have its own quirks about how they like letters to be addressed. We have to send some post to Canada this week and wanted to check the two-letter province / territory code … Continue reading
The British government wants to offer the chance to all school children to learn Mandarin and Arabic: The schools secretary, Ed Balls, said UK plc increasingly needed children to learn the languages of countries where Britain had “very important business … Continue reading
The headline above is from Charlemagne’s notebook (a blog by an Economist contributor). Similarly Train breaks down: Continent cut off from the Times. Quite in the spirit of the more well known apocryphal headline “Fog in Channel. Continent isolated” attributed … Continue reading
Watch the video first. Just one viewing, please. Hit pause when the question appears, before you watch the rest. You will be asked how many changes you noticed, so pay attention! What was your score? Mine was 2, which is … Continue reading
The Copenhagen Climate Summit starts tommorow. One editorial, with a stark message, will appear in 56 newspapers in 45 countries tomorrow: Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and … Continue reading
The following probably seems quite normal to any German reading this, after all we had price controls on practically everything here until July 2001 (Shops couldn’t offer products more than 3% under list price without breaking the law.). Even today … Continue reading
Seth Weintraub pitches an interesting idea in Computer World: … I think the SD card is going to replace the DVD drive on most of Apple’s laptops going forward. If you really need a DVD, you’ll be able to buy … Continue reading