It is Saturday morning and last night Chris did happen to mention that there had been no blog here since June. Blogging falls into that category of things that seem like a good idea at the time and then you wonder why you don't make it like Sam Pepys.
Of course, it has all been done before and making any attempt to digitalise a great diary is bound to fail. It simply lacks narrative structure. Pepys diary has, almost by accident, a structure - well it certainly has the middle part any way, just no real ending nor any real begining. I guess it's obvious that I have been reading Claire Tomlin's excellent biography.
Of all the entertaining things that happened yesterday or possibly failed to happen, I guess Susi enthuisatically putting out the Gelbe Sacke along with all our other trash cans.
You have to appreciate that here in Germany it looks as if we are recycling everything. We have six different bins - one for paper, one for biological material (er.. food) and one for a special selection of things (tetra packs, plastic and tins) the yellow bag (oder Gelbe Sack, I think I added an e back there), one for glass that is non-returnable (it doesn't have pfand - deposit), one for all the different PET bottles (which have a deposit of 25 cents each) and then there is the bin for everything else.
Naturally the office of the local authority provides a useful planner to let you know when to put out which trash. Occassionally they all go out on the same day (it is usually a Friday, but not always) and paper never goes out - you have to take that with the non returnable glass to one of the recycling areas.
Anyway the most important bin to get out is the large brown wheelie bin with the compost in it. If you miss that, it could start to overflow. So I spent a distracting fifteen minutes last August programming all of the dates into my PDA - with a clear description of which special trash can went out.
However Susi came in late from work two days ago and told me that she had put all the bins outside the apartment for the morning.
Oh dear, I said and mentioned that it wasn't Gelbe sack day - just bio-tonne (that's the old food and potato peelings) and Restmüll ( had to switch keyboard settings there) which is everything else. A check on my PDA confirmed this. Not to worry, I said I would take the yellow bags back in the next morning. The bio tonne truck always comes at about half past six in the morning, closely followed by the everything truck, so if you are not punctual with your bins you will miss them - this is why Susi was so keen to put them out the night before. (Is anyone doing the math on all of this? It must cost a fortune to do this. It would be cheaper for the government to ban packaging- shops could just pour stuff into our hands!) .
Anyway, the next morning, when I went out to collect the everything bin, the compost wheelie bin and the reticent yellow bags, I noticed that Susi had created a mind virus in some of the other residents - who believing that it was a Gelbe Sack day, had put out their bags too.
This sort of behaviour can create thinking loops oddly, it is one of the principal causes of traffic jams in Germany (they are called Stau) you can sit in a stationary jam for two hours and at the end of it you discover not a giant lorry overturned or extensive road works, no just nothing. Drivers stay in the outside lane or don't let others out at those marvellous transition junctions where cars enter and leave the motorway at the same time - on the same bit of road.
Don't you have those in Britain someone asked me and I thought long and hard and answered no, normally we have two, one for on and one for exit and in Scotland the only transition slipway is on the North side of the Forth Road Bridge, and the engineers had no choice - the North Atlantic was on the other side. But I should not really get on to the subject of driving in this blog otherwise I would have to laugh too much while typing.
more anon.
Of course, it has all been done before and making any attempt to digitalise a great diary is bound to fail. It simply lacks narrative structure. Pepys diary has, almost by accident, a structure - well it certainly has the middle part any way, just no real ending nor any real begining. I guess it's obvious that I have been reading Claire Tomlin's excellent biography.
Of all the entertaining things that happened yesterday or possibly failed to happen, I guess Susi enthuisatically putting out the Gelbe Sacke along with all our other trash cans.
You have to appreciate that here in Germany it looks as if we are recycling everything. We have six different bins - one for paper, one for biological material (er.. food) and one for a special selection of things (tetra packs, plastic and tins) the yellow bag (oder Gelbe Sack, I think I added an e back there), one for glass that is non-returnable (it doesn't have pfand - deposit), one for all the different PET bottles (which have a deposit of 25 cents each) and then there is the bin for everything else.
Naturally the office of the local authority provides a useful planner to let you know when to put out which trash. Occassionally they all go out on the same day (it is usually a Friday, but not always) and paper never goes out - you have to take that with the non returnable glass to one of the recycling areas.
Anyway the most important bin to get out is the large brown wheelie bin with the compost in it. If you miss that, it could start to overflow. So I spent a distracting fifteen minutes last August programming all of the dates into my PDA - with a clear description of which special trash can went out.
However Susi came in late from work two days ago and told me that she had put all the bins outside the apartment for the morning.
Oh dear, I said and mentioned that it wasn't Gelbe sack day - just bio-tonne (that's the old food and potato peelings) and Restmüll ( had to switch keyboard settings there) which is everything else. A check on my PDA confirmed this. Not to worry, I said I would take the yellow bags back in the next morning. The bio tonne truck always comes at about half past six in the morning, closely followed by the everything truck, so if you are not punctual with your bins you will miss them - this is why Susi was so keen to put them out the night before. (Is anyone doing the math on all of this? It must cost a fortune to do this. It would be cheaper for the government to ban packaging- shops could just pour stuff into our hands!) .
Anyway, the next morning, when I went out to collect the everything bin, the compost wheelie bin and the reticent yellow bags, I noticed that Susi had created a mind virus in some of the other residents - who believing that it was a Gelbe Sack day, had put out their bags too.
This sort of behaviour can create thinking loops oddly, it is one of the principal causes of traffic jams in Germany (they are called Stau) you can sit in a stationary jam for two hours and at the end of it you discover not a giant lorry overturned or extensive road works, no just nothing. Drivers stay in the outside lane or don't let others out at those marvellous transition junctions where cars enter and leave the motorway at the same time - on the same bit of road.
Don't you have those in Britain someone asked me and I thought long and hard and answered no, normally we have two, one for on and one for exit and in Scotland the only transition slipway is on the North side of the Forth Road Bridge, and the engineers had no choice - the North Atlantic was on the other side. But I should not really get on to the subject of driving in this blog otherwise I would have to laugh too much while typing.
more anon.
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