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.