Keys Corner » Germany

Kronberg is not Frankfurt

John — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:28:01 +0000

This post is for Richard in the UK, who has got it fixed in his mind that Kronberg is part of Frankfurt. These views are what you see if you walk the 1-2 km from our flat to the nearest S-Bahn (commuter railway) station.

In the first photo, you can see the Frankfurt skyline on the horizon (the Commerzbank Tower and the Trade Fair “MesseTurm” among other buildings). The other photo is looking in the opposite direction – we really are quite rural here, Richard.

(Clarification: Kronberg belongs to the metropolitan area of Frankfurt, but not to the city of Frankfurt).

Incompetent

John — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:00:00 +0000

The Daily Telegraph, yesterday:

Euro bail-out in doubt as ‘hysteria’ sweeps Germany
German Chancellor Angela Merkel no longer has enough coalition votes in the Bundestag to secure backing for Europe’s revamped rescue machinery, threatening a consitutional crisis in Germany and a fresh eruption of the euro debt saga.

Merkel is – in my eyes – the most incompetent and dangerous Chancellor that Germany has suffered since the founding of the federal republic. The only good thing about this mess that she has drifted into would be if the government fell and new elections were called. Germany needs some leadership, and not someone managing by consensus based on Bildzeitung polls.

Update (2011-09-04): This article (in German) is why Merkel worries me so much. And here an article in English.

MyZeil, Frankfurt

John — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 07:22:44 +0000

I read A Daily Dose of Architecture fairly regularly, but not every day. Which is why I only noticed Ken Lee’s photos of MyZeil this morning. MyZeil is pretty spectacular, and Ken’s images show it in all its glory.

More of Ken’s MyZeil images on Flickr here. They are miles better than my own efforts (which to save my blushes I am not publishing!), and were taken with an iPhone! (No screenshot of the photos as I would need to license them from Getty Images, and Getty Images and I don’t get on together).

Praise for German health service

John — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:11:06 +0000

We hear a lot about the British health system from our various relatives in the UK, and it is not usually positive. In particular, getting x-rays done seems to involve lots of waiting to get x-rayed and further waiting to get the results. I don’t mean a few hours, but rather, days or more typically, weeks.

So I have to admit to being impressed (again and again) by the efficiency of the system here:

Yesterday I went to the dentist because I have had toothache for the last three or four weeks. Not all the time, but sharp pains that come once or twice a day and disappear within a few seconds. She removed a crown on the tooth I thought was the source of the pain, but couldn’t see anything wrong. She recommended that I get an ultrasound scan of my sinuses to check that there was nothing wrong there. So this morning I called the local ear nose and throat doctor to ask for an appointment.

I was able to see him at about 10:00 am and had the scan and he also looked into my sinuses with an endoscopic camera. Everything was clear, so he called to the local radiological clinic and asked if they could do a CT scan of my sinuses and jaw to check if there was a cyst under one of the teeth. I was able to go straight over and at midday I had the scan, and half an hour later I saw the radiologist who showed me the results – I do indeed have a cyst under the root of a tooth 3 along from where the pain appears to originate.

The red ring marks the cyst immediately under the root of my tooth

He copied the entire 250 MB scan onto a CD for me to give to the ear nose and throat doctor tomorrow morning – he will then discuss the results with him before they inform the dentist of the diagnosis and discuss the necessary work that will need to be carried out.

That is impressively fast, I think. Especially compared to the service times in the UK.

Nacht der Museen

John — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 13:36:31 +0000

We went to the Nacht der Museen (Museum Night) in Frankfurt yesterday. This annual event is always well visited, and is a good way to see inside the 47 participating locations in Frankfurt. The tickets cost 12 Euro for unlimited visits to any of the museums last night.

As well as being able to visit the regular exhibitions in the museums, the organisers also lay on special events for children and a wide range of musical performances for the adults. You can get an idea of what was on offer here (zipped PDF file, 3.3 MB).

It’s impossible to visit everything in the time (19:00 hrs to 02:00 hrs), but we enjoyed visiting the Museum für Angewandte Kunst, the Museum der Weltkulturen and the Museum für Kommunikation.

Here’s a few pictures (I don’t know why the column formatting is a bit strange, but all the pictures are showing!):

Help fill in the blanks on waze.com

John — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:57:33 +0000

Using the waze desktop maps

There is a new social mobile application on the block – waze.com.

You can download the application onto your smartphone (Apple, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian at the moment, Blackberry is coming shortly) and use the free software as an on-board turn-by-turn navigation system.

The maps are produced and updated by the waze community – it simply involves driving around with waze running on your mobile phone – and the more people doing that, the better the quality of the maps becomes.

The waze turn-by-turn navigation screen on an iPhone

You can add information such as where the speed traps in your area are. See the user manual here for more information. You can even show temporary blockages, such as accidents. These and the location of other waze users who are driving around are shown on the navigation screen.

Waze started in Israel and only arrived in Germany and France via the USA on 11th March 2010, so there is still quite a bit to do. Waze has set up an initial country-wide map of Germany based on data from Intermap, and at the moment users are confirming the Intermap street data by driving over the roads. There are not many waze users in Germany so you can help by joining in, confirming and correcting roads (there is one error on the little area of Schmitten shown in the top screen shot above that I need to correct) and also adding PIOs and house numbers to make the maps more useful. there is a small German language waze user-forum active here.

If you are the first to confirm a piece of road, the symbol for your vehicle changes to become a little pac-man gobbling up the virgin road!

(If you see a user called “sqeze” moving on the maps, that’s me – see you on waze soon?)

Innovative Post

John — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:04:25 +0000

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:

1. Packstation

If you work during the week, which let’s face it many of us have to, it can be quite a pain getting goods that you have bought on the internet delivered at a time when you are in.

You might end up having to wait until the weekend to pick up a parcel, after the postman or courier tried to deliver during the day, and then left a note saying the parcel is at the depot. DHL (a subsidiary of the German Post) offers a free service called Packstation which allows you to have your parcels sent to an automated unit from which you can collect parcels and also send parcels – 24×7. You get an electronic card like a credit card, and a secret number and use these to collect or send your post. Sending parcels via a Packstation is cheaper then if you take it to the Post Office.

It’s a win-win service. Customers can collect and send parcels when they want, and because only DHL and the Post can put deliveries into the Packstation, it means these customers favour vendors who deliver by DHL / Post, thus securing them more business. And it saves them delivering to each customer individually, so saves money too. Strange, that most (all?) other countries don’t have similar services.

2. Printing you own stamps and address labels

I know that some other postal systems also offer a similar service, but in Germany it has been available for several years. Here it is called Internetmarke (“Internet Stamp”) and again it is offered by DHL and the Post.

This service allows customers to print stamps (they can choose a logo or image to be printed on the stamp) and package labels on-line on their own labels. They pay using several different systems, including PayPal. It means you always have a stamp with the right value at home, even if you are sending something to an unusual destination or at a non-standard tariff.

3. Postident

Postident is a service which allows you to have your identity validated at a post office.

Suppose you want to open an internet bank account. The usual process in Germany is to send of the application via the internet. A few days later, you will receive a postident form from the bank with a request to take it to the post office to have your ID verified. You take your passport or ID card, and the form and they check your documentation, fill in the details on the form and return it at the bank’s cost. This is a lot more convenient than getting copies of your passport certified by a notary or sending off recent copies of several utility bills to prove who you are (which is the usual system in the UK, for instance).

As far as I know, this service hasn’t been copied anywhere else.

Successful German Discounters

John — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:03:21 +0000

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 ten global players. Between them, these six make $178,6 billion annual revenue out of the $220,2 billion that the top ten make between them. That is pretty impressive.

Part of the reason that Wal-Mart failed in Germany is that although Wal-Mart is seen in the USA as a discounter, it follows a completely different strategy to the German hard discounters. Wal-Mart’s stores are much larger, and they carry a huge range of stock compared to the German hard discounters.

Wal-Mart stocks up to 100 000 SKUs (stock keeping units); a hard discounter stocks around 1000 – 1500 SKUs. Of these over 90% are own-brand goods (Aldi), compared to under 40% at Wal-Mart. This allows them to run a much more efficient distribution chain than the larger discounters in the States, and gives them a massive price advantage. The HBR cites an comparison in made in Australia – a 60m roll of Aldi plastic wrap sells for A$1.29 compared to A$3.71 for a brand-name roll.

In case you think hard discounters are successful because of the current economic crisis, that is probably not the case – Aldi is Germany’s third most respected brand, behind Siemens and BMW. Their products often get the best rating in consumer test reports in Germany, beating the well known brand names. The quality is good enough that in the USA Aldi offers a “double guarantee” – if you are not satisfied, they replace the product and refund your money. As a result of offering good quality and low prices 43% of Germans in the lowest income group shop at Aldi – not surprising, but what is surprising is that 34% of those in the highest income group also shop there.

Here’s an overview of those ten global hard discounters summarised from the HBR article (Of the ten, I would hesitate to call Carrefour a pure “hard discounter”. Although they run some hard discount stores, they also run a large number of hypermarkets, each having a floor area and number of SKUs similar to Wal-Mart’s stores) :

Hard Discounter	HQ	Global Revenue 2008 (US$ billion)
Aldi	Germany	73.5
Schwarz Group (Lidl)	Germany	62.3
Carrefour	France	16.0
Rewe Group	Germany	15.9
Tengelmann	Germany	14.0
Dollar General	USA	11.0
Edeka	Germany	8.4
Family Dollar	USA	7.3
Dansk Supermarked	Denmark	7.3
Norma	Germany	4.5

I have blocked Telecom’s number 08003009920

John — Sat, 09 May 2009 11:19:02 +0000

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 deserves such treatment and if they want to tell me something, they have my address and can write a letter.

The Eschborn-Frankfurt City Loop

John — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:24:46 +0000

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 1st May each year, and passes a few hundred meters from where we live, so we walked up to watch the bikes go by.

The bike racks on the support cars are quite something, taking four or more bikes on the roof or a large number of spare wheels.

Adobe, Mac and the Post don’t get on

John — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:48:37 +0000

Unsuccessful print using Adobe Acrobat Reader

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 address labels for packages. Both services produce PDF documents which you can print out at home.

Unfortunately, neither service works properly with Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader on the Mac. Which is strange, given that Adobe is the mother of the PDF format. The stamps get printed with a red background – see the example on the left in the photo above. How it should look is shown on the right of the same picture.

The results of printing an address label are even worse- the whole label is printed in mirror writing. The first time that happened, I scanned the unfortunate label and flipped it in Photoshop to get it the right way round. I didn’t want to waste the postage.

I have found in the mean time, that only Adobe’s products have these problems. If I open the files with, for example, Skim (freeware), everything works just fine!

A smoker’s “victory” in Germany?

John — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 05:14:15 +0000

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 illegal. This is seen as a victory for smokers. Wrong. The court has posed restrictions on when smoking will be allowed in the bars in the interim period, and has given the government less than two years to get their act together and publish a workable law.

The problem with the existing law is that small bars and restaurants are disadvantaged compared to larger establishments which can set aside a separate “smoker’s room” so long as they also have a non-smoking part too. So the little guys have been loosing business to the bigger places.

The court has explicitly said that a complete ban on smoking is fine – it protects people’s health and is in line with EU law.

I’m optimistic that after the next national election in 2009, a blanket ban will be passed – it’s the only way the government can conform with EU law and the court ruling. It’ll be have to be some of the fastest legislation ever passed here, however – the court has set a deadline for the end of 2009 and the election is likely to be held in September 2009. The government is unlikely to push new legislation through before the election because we have one of the highest proportions of smokers in Germany (34%) of any country in the EU (and because anti-smoking campaigns are associated historically with the Nazi movement), and there is a strong smoking-lobby in Germany.