1. When you go into most major German city centers.....the shopping district have large empty store-fronts. Wiesbaden currently has one enormous store building in this 'decay' situation.
Well....I noticed via Focus yesterday.....Ikea has decided to look for excellent rental deals in such urban centers....rent out a building, and set up a show-room situation. First ones? Koln and Stuttgart.
2. AfD Party nationally? Polling from the weekend says their national numbers have retreated....down to 18-perent now. If a national election were to occur now? Well....the polling says that the CDU/CSU would get 30-percent, with the SPD at 3rd place (16-percent).
3. For those who aren't aware, there are a number of hangover drinks now available in Germany....after a hard night of drinking. Two of the more known drinks are: One:47 and Alkorin. I personally won't vouch for either....but they are well known.
So, it came up in RBB news out of Berlin, there's a new service where you call (say at 6 AM on Sunday) and you say hangover issues....then some 'nurse' (she or he is actually registered as such).....will come out for X-amount of money and bring you a recovery drink.
I won't say this is a great business idea but there's probably a couple thousand Euro a month that you could make off some delivery-scheme and a nurse on a scooter.
4. Harsh public transportation news this week for me in the local area. City of Wiesbaden went and cut 35,490 'trips' from their schedule (for the remainder of the year).
For me? I have two lines running through my village, an it appears that 52 trips were cut for each seven days (between the two lines).
Lack of funding? Yeah, and a problem recruiting/keeping bus-drivers.
But those guys selling you on how public transportation is going be the 'answer' in the future? You can dismiss those folks.
5. Live action telecast by ARD/ZDF (public TV in Germany) over the Iran attack on Israel? Well....no. This got brought up yesterday....where a number of Germans were curious about what was going on (near midnight) and it was simply too late for the limited manpower of the two to say anything much. If you wanted live reporting.....CNN was your best possibility.
2 comments:
"Lack of funding? Yeah, and a problem recruiting/keeping bus-drivers.
But those guys selling you on how public transportation is going be the 'answer' in the future? You can dismiss those folks."
Bit unfair. I think the people saying that public transportation is going to be the answer are actually saying that investing in public transportation and funding it properly is going to be the answer. You know, like no one is currently doing in our share price driven economy for the boomers retirements.
At the end of 2024, I expect this national monthly 49-Euro ticket to evolve into 59-to-65 Euro. With the payraises demanded by the rail and bus drivers...plus inflation, it has to occur.
My complaint is that they went into maximum over-drive after Covid ended to sell people on the bus/bahn business. That meant schedules had to grow and more trips-per-route. Almost immediately (at least in my local area)...a shortage of drivers popped up. It reached a point last year where they hired a French company to bring 20 extra drivers (hotel expenses covered) to run the extra routes. The hydrogen bus experiment they did locally? Failed....so they sold the buses.
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