The German Post has implemented some innovative services which either haven’t been copied abroad, or only took off in other countries quite a bit later:
Also posted in Management |
By John | December 12, 2009
Wal-Mart gave up trying to compete in Germany in 2006, unable to compete effectively against Aldi and Lidl.
Nonetheless, I was surprised to read in the latest Harvard Business Review (link to a summary of the article), that six German “hard discounters” (their term for discounters like Aldi and Lidl) are in the top [...]
Also posted in Economics, Management |
Since the German telecom has been calling our fax number and then disconnecting after 1 second for the last several weeks, I set up a re-routing in our Fritz!box router of calls originating from their number back to their own call center.
The calls continued, so today, I have blocked their number completely. Incompetence [...]
The Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop is the new name for the 190 km long bike race “Rund um den Henninger-Turm“, which had to change its name after the last race in 2008 when the sponsor, the Henninger Brewery, dropped their sponsorship of the race (which has been run annually since 1961).
It takes place on the [...]
By John | December 15, 2008
The German Post and their parcel service, DHL, have a great internet service – you can print your own stamps online (Just don’t try to use the internet address printed on the stamps – it doesn’t exist! It seems to have been a temporary glitch – the address is online now) or print out pre-paid [...]
Also posted in Computing, On the web |
I don’t like sitting in a smoky restaurant or pub and intensely dislike having smoking in my house. So you might think I’d be upset at the “smoker’s victory” being reported by the local and international press. The constitutional court has ruled that the law in some German states, prohibiting smoking in one-room establishments, is [...]
We visited a friend in Rostock from Thursday until today. It is a really lovely town – it has been nicely renovated since the reunification in the early 1990’s and is a very pleasant place to live. The historical building style uses bricks very effectively – and many of the modern buildings in the town [...]
By John | November 11, 2007
View from the Pentagon behind the scenes:
US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night…
…Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: ‘They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have [...]
Also posted in Iran, USA |
The Economist has published an interesting – and if you live in Belgium or Germany, depressing – table showing what percentage of an employer’s labour costs doesn’t arrive in employee’s pay packets. In Belgium and Germany, more than 50% lands in the government’s pocket or pays for compulsary insurance.
What did surprise me, is that [...]
Also posted in Economics |
By John | February 18, 2007
Op Art opened in the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt am Main yesterday. It contains optical illusions from the 1950’s and 1960’s by artists such as Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, François Morellet, Julio Le Parc, and Gianni Colombo.
We’re definitely planning to visit it in the next couple of weeks. It’s on until 20th May 2007. [...]
