Supermarket Daze

Have you ever felt dazzled by a sign? I mean really overwhelmed by the powerful, mind-boggling concept it conveyed? Well, it happened to Schatz and me last Saturday, as we were about to do our weekend shopping.

Seeds for Children just € 2.49 a bucket!

Seeds for Children. And they are even available in two varieties, as flowers or as sprouts! Sometimes you wonder about the geniuses behind such scientific achievements!

One bucket just left of the sign even says it quite unambiguously , this is 'Kindersaatgut' or 'children seeds'. Like carrot seeds or parsley seeds or sunflower seeds. Only for children.

Unfortunately, the buckets are not see-through and so, short of buying one, I can only resort to guesswork about the nature of these seeds. Are they small like koriander seeds or rather more like beans? Or maybe they're even bigger, like winegum bears, just maybe shaped like babies? Or maybe they're sorted into little bags, one for boys, one for girls?

We put various such theories to some friends at a brunch on Sunday but so far noone else has seen these mysterious buckets, let alone opened one and sown some children, and most certainly noone has ever harvested this produce.

So quite a few questions remain open: are these perennial children or for one season only? Do they come in different sizes, i.e. from bonzai to gigantic, like trees? What exactly is the difference between kids grown in bulbs or as sprouts? Do they prefer direct sun or shade, and can you grow them inside on your window sill?

Still rolling all these thoughts around in our minds, we entered a neighbouring discounter, where we suddenly faced a long row of red and green cartons.

Do they know it's still almost 4 months till Christmas?

We really wanted to scream and shout and throw bags of flour through the aisles but we decided to behave and just mutter words of unbelief. And return for a photograph...

Once upon a time, people started baking cookies and Christmas puddings and making Christmas confectionary as late as December. Then in November. About 10 years ago they started selling the stuff in October.

And now, for a couple of years, they have been trying to flog it as early as September. By the time it's Christmas, there will be hardly anything left and customers will long for strawberries...

Not us. None of that for us before the 4th Sunday before Christmas (1st Advent Sunday in Germany) or December 1st, whichever comes first.

But even that is still two and a half months away. Eleven long weeks to look at high-calory, high-sugar, low-fibre Christmas munchies when you really want to see broccoli, zucchini, bell peppers, cucumbers, mushrooms, fish - and maybe some pasta, cheese and wine....

But maybe the good news is that in a few years time they will start selling Christmas sweets on Easter Tuesday, and noone will get fat at Christmas anymore...

No Trainz to Mainz

Tuesday evening I took the train to Mainz, Germany, for a next day meeting. I actually got there only one hour late which was amazing really in view of the fact that there were no trains running in the last segment of my trip due to a major problem with the railway's electricity lines.

You think Germans are perfect organizers? Hell no! Even though lots of travelers were stranded and quite lost at times for hours, there was only 1 staff member of Deutsche Bahn (German Railways) on duty at the information desk at Frankfurt Airport Station when I arrived there at 22.18h. Trains were still arriving, not to mention planes from all over the world...

Yes, all of ONE single gentleman who was clearly out of his depth. Especially considering that there are really two parts to the station, at least 500 m apart, the Fernbahnhof (for long distance trains such as, for example, the ICE high speed trains and the Regionalbahnhof (for regional and local trains), as they are called.

Everyone else had gone home, it seems, and whoever was in charge of emergency procedures probably had gone home too. I don't know when the technical problem occurred but I heard that someone had encountered the same problem as early as 18.30h though it may have started even earlier than that.

To cut a long frustrating story short:
After running back and forth between the two stations and not finding ANY official at the regional station, I asked the information guy at the long distance station for a taxi voucher because no regional trains were going my way. He told me to take the 23.29 IC train to Mainz. I was wary for I had heard that only ICE trains could pass the problem area because they have their own tracks and electricity lines but no, he was adamant. So I went to the platform to wait as, of course, the so-called Lounge was closed already...

At 23.10h I asked the chief conductor of yet another ICE train whether he was aware of what was going on, just to check whether the conductors knew anything as the conductor on my train had not informed us about it before pulling into the airport station. He raised his right eyebrow, checked his WAP railway phone, didn't find anything and then called someone to check whether what I was telling him was true - and then found out that the 23.29h train wasn't running either.

The general remedy seems to have been telling people to take the train to Frankfurt and take it from there which the announcer then did.

Actually, one of our delegates did so at about 19.30h. He got into Mainz - normally 25 minutes away by local train - around 22.00h after having been told in Frankfurt proper to get on some obscure little train - which got him into some obscure little town in the middle of nowhere where it ended, leaving him stranded without any clue to his whereabouts. He ended up taking a taxi...

I refused to listen to any such advice just sending me away but unfortunately, the misinformation guy wouldn't budge and give me a taxi voucher, even when I found three other travelers that wanted to go to the same destination. I was tired, furious and very noisy, drawing a lot of attention. He still didn't budge and claimed those were his orders. It was 23.25 by that time and I really wanted to get to my hotel before dawn, so eventually I said "fine, I will go to Frankfurt if you print out my traveling instructions all the way to Mainz so I know what I'm doing". At least then I would know what time I'd get into Mainz which might help my case for a taxi.

He checked his computer, checked it again, made a phone call - then opened his drawer and got out a taxi voucher... Ha!

With all the aggro, it still seems I was the first one not to accept the crap advice and make a fuss. I hope the other people standing in line learned from me and put their foot down as well...

To summarize the problem:
The man at the information counter didn't really know what he was doing. Probably because noone told him much.

The people who made the station announcements didn't know what they were doing. Probably because noone told them much.

The train drivers at the regional station didn't know what to tell people. Probably because... well, you get my drift.

Conductors on trains approaching the area, such as on the ICE I was on, didn't know anything about the massive problems and therefore advised people wrongly. Because noone had told them anything.

And I found out the next day that even the staff at Mainz Central Station ticket office didn't know anything about it, so they kept selling tickets for trains that didn't run...

I am sure the information guy did the best he could - he deserves a pat on the shoulder, he really got stuck between the rock and a hard place. Though he should have complained much earlier to his superiors about not placing (or leaving) more staff at the station until the last trains were gone, told the travelers accordingly and then handed out taxi vouchers.

As far as the manager in charge is concerned who left people stranded throughout the region with no or only stupid and wrong advice, no staff to ask or be reassured by - I suggest that he pays for the additional damage to the railways caused by his inaptitude and is fired. Alternatively, he could be demoted to information counter staff without opportunity for promotion...

PS: check out this photograph of the Fernbahnhof - the information counter is at the far end in the center of the photograph.