well, maybe too early this entry about a long and cold winter, but if you see the pictures in the news (NEWS? difficult in the US, I know) you can tell that currently the whole northern hemisphere is freezing cold, I sincerely hope these stories about low solar activity and lack of sunspots (small ice age, Maunder Minimum) turn out wrong and hysteric. Either way, I completed my second (and hopefully last excursion to IKEA on tuesday, IKEA Moorfleet, located at the END of the inhabited world!!): snow was falling hard, so I could have postponed. but the urge to finally get it over with is too strong (I wanted to go last fridayalready, I am getting tired of liveing between boxes, and need furniture/closets/shelves for storage, finally!) Alex also needs stuff and is accompanying me. AS the snow fall gets worse I am calling Star Car the rental agency: " Do your cars have winter tires?" Answer: "they have year-round tires" Ah well, this must be a "Hamburgism". At least in Bavaria , in winter people are now required by law to have winter tires , to reduce accidents and chaos on the streets. When we pick up the car and leave the parking lot a bicyclist slips on the icy road in front of the parking lot and falls flat on the road, but who rides a bicycle in this weather???? (and what idiot rents a transporter with rear-wheel drive and "year-round-tires" in this weather????)
BTW, the lady at Star Car gives me a long story, how it would be too expensive for the company to change tires every winter. Hell, how about the repairs when people trash their cars??? and about buying cars and tires in the first place??? "sorry , we cannot offer you a car with tires, imagine how expensive that would be for the company if we would actually have to buy tires for all our cars" ????? What kind of argument is that, please???
Well, I do not want to bore you guys with a detailled description of a long ride on icy streets in a snowy Hamburg, sliding tires in every curve, failing to get intoi the institute driveway (uphill 0.3% incline).
The whole ride we listen to the traffic reports "careful for a non-secured accident with a truck in Freeway soandso" this sentence is repeated for literally EVERY freeway in the larger Hamburg area. Coming back we take the regular road: we pass through harbor area, and should we get stuck, God help us, there are no bus-lines here. (Neither people, just container-loading areas and storage halls) the deserted areas pass without accidents, the first Aldi-stores and rather raunchy looking "Automatenkasinos"
(gambling machine etablissements/halls, don't know a good word for it, they call these things "casinos", they are typically run down, smell bad and you don't wantto spend your time there. period.)
re-appear, back in "civilization"!!!! after passing through Hammerbrook, a harbor -associated suburb with mostly big bureau buildings, we almost have reached Hamburg again. Every curve is associated with sliding tires maximum speed reached is probably 30 km/hour. Some carts get annoyed, but I always see the 700Euro deductible in my mind, so I don't care about some smartass Hamburg-driver being annoyed about me being slow. They can pass and trash their cars without me.
First we have to unload at Alex's place. despite of an almost level street, the car gets stuck when I try to make a U-turn(!), with tires spinning through freely in the snow, and believe me I drove in snow MANY times! I have to sacrifice my newly purchased doormat to get the damn car going again. after unloading by stuff I am sending Alex home and take the car back to star car I resist on peeing into the car, to voice my opinion about the "year-round-tires". No more desaster, but when I am home, of course it is past midnight. We left at 4pm.
But now I'm all set and will post pictures when the apartment is finally done!
All over I will be happy when I can siton the grass in the sun and have my beer at the beach again (The"Strandperle" beach-bar should be reachable on foot from my new place now!)
Take care more soon as things happen!
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