The Telekom giveth....#727

....and Freenet taketh away.

In the process of switching ICT providers - Telekom for voice and Freenet for DSL to Freenet for the whole shebang (as-much-as-you-can-eat VOIP, 16-fold boost in DSL speed)

And all that for half the price.

As always, there's a downside.

Telekom tells me they're disconnecting me on Wednesday, Freenet might connect me on... "oh, around the 10th. And Telekom hasn't told us when they're switching yet, so it's BOUND to be later"

So we're likely to be incommunicado for a bit

Nightmare on Ludwig Street - #726

Lena from the Bosporus told me about this one.

This guy has a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria on the Ludwigstrasse, just around the corner from the Maria Ward school, for girls.

Every afternoon, he's invaded by hordes of nubiles, flashing their eyelids (and I wouldn't want to know what else) and asking for "this extra" and "that extra" on a Pizza Margherita.

Now, a Pizza Margherita is tomato and mozzarella.

Nothing else.

I though this guy was a purist, defending the original concept of the Margherita.

"No, mate" he said "They were bankrupting me"

"That's why I put up the sign"*

"Doesn't stop them asking, though..."

*"You can't have the large Pizza Margherita with salami, ham, pepperoni salami or tuna"

T for two... #725

...or is it four.

Telecom, the privatised SOE, tried to patent magenta as their brand colour.

Fat chance.

It pretty much has a monopoly when it comes to public phones.

Not that anyone actually uses them these days.


Not doing very well at all, actually....

Don't I know you....? #724

Used to work with a lady whose hubby was a Chief Superintendent at Scotland Yard. (Evil sod - used to beat her black and blue and "took early retirement", as they say, after being investigated for serious corruption)

But he'd look at you with his beady eyes when introduced and ask menacingly "Don't I know you..?" and no-one would put it past him to fix the evidence and put you away for 10 years....

Don't know what he'd make of this installation from the Art College.

Probably stand there all day, going from picture to picture and repeating "Don't I know you...?"

Just like a parrot....

So that's OK then....#723

So Helen pops her head out of the front door and thinks: "Fog? It wasn't foggy earlier on".

Then she smells the burning and notices the chappy frantically banging on the neighbour's door and yelling "Fire"

Showing great presence of mind, she pulls the door closed behind her, in the process locking in the 2 cats.

And the keys.

Professor Dr Mr Helen's off at the university at this time, doing whatever it is that Geology Professors do, when he gets a call, "suggesting that it might be a good idea if I came home. Fairly soon" as he put it.

So the end of the story is... Helen and PDMH are fine, the cats are fine, they can't move back into their apartment (smoke and water-damaged only, but the house is structurally shonky) , help came too late for the lady who lived in the burned-out apartment (they think that she was smoking in bed), Helen and PDMH (and the bloody cats) have got somewhere to stay and they're moving back into an apartment just around the corner next month.

So that's OK, then.

Just don't expect any new posts on Heliospheric for a while.

Not that I was, of course....

Has...- #722

..bean

That's what people do say.

They're probably right.

They mostly are....

This way down...#721

..or up.

And what do you do if you're colour-blind, anyway?

Escalator at Mainz Hauptbahnhof

Copycats - #720

Those rascally Brasilians copy everything.

Not content just to nick Carnival, they've even paved the Copacabana just like the Steingasse here in Mainz.

Lacks authenticity, though.

Their's is populated by half-naked nubile flossies.

If they'd wanted to do it properly, they'd have had to import some rotund, middle-aged Meenzer Meedsche

Then again.....

m10

m9

m8

m7

m6

Monthly Theme Day - A touch of glass - #719

 

Schott Glass is very much a Local Hero around here.

The company itself has been around for 125 years. Started off in Jena (which was East Germany from 1945 to 1989), got kidnapped by the Americans as the second world war ended and plopped down in Mainz where it was safe from the advancing Slavic hordes.

Something like that, anyway.

You can figure on their hitting AT LEAST the local bits of the paper once a week, with some new technological breakthrough or an observatory lense that they've been polishing for a year to achieve its perfect surface.

Or the fact that the Outlet store is relocating to just down the road from us.

Now, the Outlet store is quite excellent.

Good discounts on discontinued lines, REALLY good discounts on supposedly imperfect stuff and MASSIVE discounts on stuff that's so ugly that only a mother could love it...

Only down side is that the glasses are all empty.

That's easily fixed.

Plop.

Glug glug glug.

That's better...

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