Thursday 28th February 2008 - Dr Remington Strikes Again and Life In Germany

As followers of my previous blog will already be aware I became a season ticket holder recently for Dr Remington's finest hair clippers emporium, and this week decided to go a little more extreme by using a shorter doo-daa (yes I should really call it by it's real name, but at this precise moment in time the correct term for the wee grooved piece of plastic that decides how bald you will be has left my brain - which is situated in my left ass-cheek just incase that would be your next question). I was going to call it an adapter, but I know that just doesn't sound right either, so for the purpose of this blog it is hereby known as the doo-daa ok. This first paragraph is rather up the left when you read the rest of this blog entry, but for some reason I have decided to leave it in and not remove.

The last week or so has seen me visit a number of different customers in as many different countries, all of which were pretty cool - it's always good to get out of the office and do some work in other places as you get more of an insight into life wherever they are. Take the relatively simple act of me moving from the UK to Germany - yes I knew that they spoke German (or Deutsch if we're being picky) but without doing some pre-homework there are a lot of things different from the life I've known living in Scotland, Wales, America and Ireland previously.

Yes there are many obvious differences like the money (geld) being different, but for anyone living in Ireland or that does holidays in Europe then the euro is already common knowledge and most people know off the top of their heads the rough value for the exchange rate. They drive on the other side of the road from us - well technically speaking us peeps from the UK are the ones in the minority as there are many more countries out there driving on the right hand side of the road rather than the left like the UK and Ireland. The normal UK definition for grade of petrol you buy is in RON, whereas here it's the same number but is defined ROZ instead - when you land into the forecourt of a local garage if you don't have a clue by the names then you can simply look at the ROZ rating on the pumps to work out what you should use, but for the purposes of education here's the lowdown:-

Benzin - 91ROZ - mainly used for the old cars that don't need the higher rated go-go juice
Super Benzin - 95ROZ - your typical everyday unleaded fuel used in the UK
Super Plus Benzin - 97ROZ - the equivalent of super unleaded (carried approx 6 cents extra cost than Super Benzin)

As well as these 3 main options at your local fill up point the likes of BP and Esso do their 99 and 100 rated fuel, but for these you can normally expect to pay another 6-10 cents over and above the cost of Super Plus. Diesel is easy - it translates as diesel, so not much chance of messing that one up is there. By now you're probably wondering if all I ever talk about relates to cars, well if the truth be told then yes it does, but in the interests of your sanity (if you're not already reading this on a nice fluffy laptop in a room with rubber walls and cushioned floor) lets have a looky at some of the other differences.

Back in Haggisland around the year 2000 there was the emergence of recycling test areas where people were given a wee box to save up recyclable materials and this was picked up every week or two, and then from there the legendary blue bin followed to give your lonely black/grey one some company as it attempted to impersonate a guard dog in your back garden - now you may be thinking I'm just being random using the words "GUARD DOG" but let me tell you, having seen first hand the damage a wheelie bin can do to an unexpected visitor in a garden it deserves the name, and the poor lad that jumped the fence expecting to hit a plush patch of fine grass got a surprise when he went head over heels and executed a prefect face plant into the ground - one of those Kodak moments when you obviously have no time to whip out your camera and snap a mid air "oh oh, here comes the pain" face of a randomer, assuming of course you have a camera with you in the first place. Anyway, we're starting to wander a little off the track here regarding recycling...in Germany you not only have a black bin and a recycling bin, you get another pair to keep these guys company too:-

Yellow - Things like aluminum cans/pringles tins and other such recyclable goodies
Green - Anything deemed as being biodegradable (plants/food etc)
Grey - Paper and Cardboard
Black - normal bits and bobs that don't fall into the other definitions

At first this can take a little getting used to if you're used to just launching almost everything you don't put into your mouth into a single bin, but once you've used the system for a week or so it becomes second nature and you miss it when you go somewhere else and only have one bin.

On top of the bin aspect of the German recycling world, you also have to pay for every single plastic carrier bag you pick up at your local supermarket - so you normally find people take along a cloth bag or ten to put their acquired shopping into, thus saving a smack in the wallet for plastic carrier bags when leaving. In the soft and alcoholic drinks departments you will also notice if you look at the price tags that there is often more info on it than just the price - this is because on almost all carbonated or alcoholic drinks containers you will find a refund value (Pfand) meaning if you return it to the store when empty you get some cash back.

To make this easy to understand - if I was to pick up a crate of 20 bottles of Erdinger Weiss Bier (wheat beer to the un-initiated) and 6 bottles of Coke I would probably see around 22 euro ding up on the register as I leave the shop. Once all the beer and coke bottles are empty I return to the store where you will almost always find a machine which has a couple of belts on it - small one which you fire single bottles into - it then scans the bottle for a recycling logo and then sucks the bottle into a black hole somewhere behind, and a larger hole and belt at the bottom which I place the crate containing 20 empty beer bottles onto, which again is then scanned and whisked away into the machine. For a typical plastic bottle you may get 8-10 cents back, so say 60 cents for the theoretical 6 pack used in this blog entry and then for the crate and bottles anything around 4-5 euro is typical, the machine tallies up all your goodies and spits you out a small receipt which you use like a credit note at the checkout - so the 22 euro I spent to buy the gear ends up having 5 euro or so deducted from it for being such a nice recycling dude.

Whatever will I find to write about next, I'm sure I'll think of something, ciao!

Ciao.PREVIOUS BLOG ENTRIES

2008-02-17 - Have I Just Done A Britney?

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