A trip to the nearest post office can rile me these days, and plenty of other people in Germany too. It starts with the walk. In a bygone era — 10 or 15 years ago — five minutes were all I needed to hoof to the branch up the street. Now I’ve got to hike to my district’s main office, a good 20 minutes away, where the line is often longer than a good Christian’s patience. Finding a mailbox around town can be trying as well.

The beginning of the end of the old days came in 1995, when Deutsche Bundespost, Germany’s former state-owned mail and telecommunications monopoly, split into three stock companies: Deutsche Post, Deutsche Postbank, and Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Post went public in 2000. (The German government, its largest shareholder, has a 31-percent stake.) Since profitability started trumping service, the company has slashed branches, mailboxes, and staff.

And the cost-cutting ain’t over yet. Deutsche Post announced recently that it planned to sell about 700 of its remaining 800 independent outlets nationwide to retail partners such as bakeries, supermarkets, and newsdealers by 2011. It said that the some 3,000 employees at the affected outlets would keep their jobs and continue to provide postal services under the new proprietors, though. Great. I’ll have whipped cream and a dozen stamps with my apple strudel, bitte.

The German mail giant has also raised postage, which was already high. A standard letter (which weighs up to 20 grams, or about 7/10 of an ounce) to the United States now costs 1.70 euros. By contrast, a first-class letter from the U.S. to Germany costs $0.90 so long as it weighs no more than 1 ounce.

The last time I got riled at the post office — the last time I was there, incidentally — was when I mailed my 2007 income tax return to an IRS center in Texas a week ago. (“April is the cruellest month…”) Postage for the return came to 4 euros, or $6.27 at the day’s exchange rate. Ouch.

Deutsche Post also gets me riled with its big jumps in postage from one weight class to the next. A so-called compact letter (up to 50 grams, or 1.77 ounces) to a destination outside Europe costs 2 euros. A letter weighing a single gram over 50 costs twice as much. Over 100 grams (or 3.5 ounces), postage jumps from 4 euros to 8 euros. Even if the euro and U.S. dollar were at parity, we’re talking steep postal rates here.

By contrast, the U.S. Postal Service, an independent agency of the U.S. government, charges $1.80 for a first-class letter to Germany weighing more than 1 ounce, up to 2 ounces. Postage is $2.70 for a letter between 2 and 3 ounces, and $3.60 between 3 and 4. That’s reasonable. With gradual increases you don’t have to worry that an ink blot will double your postage.

Then there’s size. A standard letter in Germany, which costs 0.55 euros to send to a domestic destination, has a length between 140 and 235 millimeters (5.5 and 9.3 inches), a width between 90 and 125 millimeters (3.5 and 4.9 inches), and a thickness up to 5 millimeters (0.2 inches). A letter just a tad longer or a tad wider becomes a “large letter” (Großbrief), which costs 1.45 euros. A letter just a tad shorter also becomes a “large letter.” Verstanden?

E-mail is such a wonderful thing.

Hamburg awoke yesterday morning under a blanket of fresh snow. While winter here was mild again, spring, which officially started a week ago, has been as cold as a li’l witch’s itty bitties. So far, Saturday’s bonfires haven’t had much effect.

Bonfires are among Germany’s Easter customs, and they’re especially common in the north. Going back to a pre-Christian tradition meant to drive out winter and make the fields fruitful, they’ve come to symbolize the resurrection of Christ. Mainly, though, they’re beacons for Teutons looking to party.


Hamburg’s “Easter fires” (Osterfeuer) are lit after dark on the evening before Easter Sunday. They’re built at various places in and around the city, including private yards and in front of churches. The biggest are on the banks of the Elbe, the one in Blankenese — an upscale western district with villas perched prettily on the hillside by the river — being the most popular.

That’s where me and the missis went. We rode out on the suburban train, walked through the district center, descended a steep stairway to the shore, and there it was: a huge, crackling bonfire spewing sparks into a black sky. A large crowd of people had gathered around it, some, sitting up close on a stone balustrade, silhouetted eerily against the dancing flames. Boats strung with lights and filled with sightseers floated by. An occasional airplane flew low overhead.

We warmed ourselves by the fire for a while, then strolled along the sandy beach. The line at the stand with grilled sausages was long, so we got a herring sandwich and mulled wine. We felt fine.

Despite the blazes all over town, everything was firmly under control. Germans are real sticklers for safety: Firefighters, and their equipment, stood by in full force. My biggest worry was whether I’d trip over a fire hose and break a leg.

Last night it was freezing again. Hey, spring: ready or not, come!

The doorbell rang during dinner. I got up from the table, opened the door, and looked into the eyes of a man I didn’t know. He showed me his badge. He asked me some questions. He jotted a couple of things down. Then he said “auf Wiedersehen” and slipped into the darkness whence he’d come. An uneasy feeling seized me. Did I say something self-incriminating? I could have refused to answer. I could have shut the door in his face. But wouldn’t that have aroused suspicion? Wouldn’t that have been worse?

The stranger wasn’t a cop, criminal investigator, or private dick. He belonged to a lower taxonomic order, closer to creeping and crawling creatures. He was an agent of the hated GEZ, the acronym for the Gebühreneinzugszentrale (Fee Collection Center) of Germany’s public television and radio broadcasters, namely ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. Heavily restricted from running commercial advertising, they’re financed largely with a fee paid by owners of broadcast-receiving devices such as television sets, radios and (since January 1, 2007) computers with Internet access. The GEZ collected 7.29 billion euros in 2006, which is more than the company that sponsors this blog paid me in 2006 and 2007 COMBINED.

The fee — currently 17.03 euros a month for a television set, or for a television set and any combination of radio and/or computer — is in addition to any private fees a viewer may have for cable or satellite TV. It doesn’t matter if you watch public programming or not, or even if you watch the tube at all. The German government has mercifully exempted some folks from the fee, including children, welfare recipients, the blind, the deaf, and people who have been certifiably dead for five years or more (just kidding — ALL dead people are exempt). Failure to pay can bring a fine of up to 1,000 euros.

Needless to say, resentment at the fee is high, all the more so as cash-fat public broadcasters often copy the lowbrow fare that commercial stations lure viewers with. Fee foes’ ire has been further fanned by a number of recent covert-advertising and product-placement scandals involving public broadcasters. Some people, be it for reasons of principle or pocketbook, refuse to pay.

That’s where the GEZ agents come in.

GEZ agents are freelancers paid on commission. The more deadbeats they collar, the more money they make. They’re motivated, in other words. In most of Germany’s 16 states, residents registration offices (Einwohnermeldeämter; in Germany you’re required to register your place of residence with the authorities) provide names and addresses to GEZ agents, who check them against lists of people who have registered their broadcast-receiving devices. The GEZ is also said to pay private sources for names and addresses of people who, say, have bought a cable TV subscription or taken part in a TV quiz.

While GEZ agents have no legal right of entry into a home to look for unregistered receivers, they’re known to use trick questions (“Have I disturbed you during the evening news?”) and the psychology of fear to find out if someone “watches black” (sieht schwarz, i.e. watches television without paying the fee). Many people falsely believe that the GEZ has patrol vehicles with signal-locating equipment.

As for me, I pay the fee — and gnash my teeth. So why the friendly visit by the GEZ? I presume the agent came to call on our new neighbors and spied an unfamiliar name along with mine on our door.

“Who’s that?” he asked me.

“My wife,” I replied.

The agent was disappointed — the fee for a married couple is the same as that for a single person. He wasn’t about to go quietly, though. Did we have a garden house? Or a car that we use for business? (A TV set or radio in those places is subject to an added fee.) No, we don’t have a garden house, I replied. Nor do we own a car.

It’s easier to dodge bullets when you’re thin.

Something like this was waiting to happen.

Here’s the background: Smoking in Hamburg’s public buildings has been banned since January 1. But Hamburg’s most famous citizen, ex-chancellor Helmut Schmidt, is also his country’s best-known Qualmender (heavy smoker). The leader of West Germany from 1974 to 1982, Schmidt puffs away on menthol ciggies wherever he goes — no-smoking signs be damned — except in church and, earlier, in the Bundestag, where he switched to snuff. Hamburg’s prestigious weekly newspaper Die Zeit, which Schmidt has co-published since 1983, even launched an interview series with him last year called Auf eine Zigarette mit Helmut Schmidt (“A Cigarette With Helmut Schmidt”).

Here’s what happened: At a New Year’s reception in a Hamburg theater, guests of honor Schmidt and his wife, Loki, also a chain smoker, did what they always do: They lit up. The popular Bild tabloid published pictures of the puffers, prompting a non-smokers group in faraway Wiesbaden to report them to the police for violating the no-smoking ban and “causing bodily harm.”

The online edition of the newsmagazine Der Spiegel quoted Hamburg’s chief prosecutor as saying late Friday that while smoking was unhealthy, “it is not to be assumed” that the Schmidts caused bodily harm — certainly not to the people who’ve accused them. Loki and Smoky, as the Schmidts are fondly known, may yet get nicked for flouting the ban, though.

Loki, by the way, is 88. Smoky, who’s had four heart bypass operations and wears a pacemaker, is 89.

Advent and Christmas are the time for carols, of course, a time when you can close your eyes in Germany and imagine you’re in Nebraska. “Deck the Halls,” “White Christmas,” “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” — on the radio, in the marketplace, wherever you go, you can hear Germans playing OUR Christmas songs.

It’s not that Germans lack Christmas traditions of their own. By golly, Germans basically wrote the book on them. Christmas trees, hot chestnuts, gingerbread, nutcrackers, mulled wine… Christmastime in Germany is wunderbar! And there are plenty of German Christmas songs, too, such as Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht; O Tannenbaum; and Alle Jahre wieder. Pleasing though they may be in their solemn, sentimental way, they’re missing a certain something, and Germans sense it.

Let’s call that something PIZAZZ.

Compare the lyrics and melody of “Jingle Bells” with those of Kling, Glöckchen, klingelingeling. See what I mean?

Part of the reason is probably the relative clunkiness of the German language. German jazz vocalist Roger Cicero, who’s featured in the next issue of Schau ins Land, says German has “more rough edges” than English does, is “a lot more straightforward” and harder to sing. He’s not the first singer to notice.

But a larger part of the reason, I suppose, is the relative stiffness and seriousness of the German people. We’ve got light and loose ditties like “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree,” “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” and “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” They’ve got light and loose ditties like… ah… wait a second… um… ?

See what I mean?

Merry Christmas! Frohe Weihnachten!