August Break: License Plates

On By StevenIn Life In Germany4 Comments

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s picture.

License plates in Europe are kind of fascinating to me.  Within the European Union, modern plates (issued after 1994) typically look like the one pictured below, but with a few key differences.  They all have the circle of stars that represents the EU, but there’s a letter underneath which represents the source country.  This plate is D for Deutschland, naturally.  There’s also F for France, A for Austria, I for Italy, and so forth.  Plates from Switzerland look different because they aren’t actually EU members; they go their own way.

plate-legend

Here in Germany, the first letter (or grouping of letters) represents the city where the plate was issued.  Bigger cities tend to have single character codes, such as B for Berlin, L for Leipzig, M for Munich, and so forth.  The R below is for Regensburg.  Smaller cities have multi-letter codes.  Nearby Schwandorf gets the amusing license code SAD, which leads to all kinds of “sad” plates making me giggle on a daily basis.  Immediately after the city code, there are safety inspection and registration stickers, and then some other letters and numbers that are unique to each vehicle.

licenseplates

Do you think I’m a little nuts for being this fascinated by something as mundane as license plate configurations?

August Break: It’s A Crutch

On By StevenIn Life In Germany5 Comments

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s picture.

When I grew up, people who needed crutches always had the vaguely triangular under-the-armpit model with the rubber pad at the top.  Here in Germany, I’ve never seen that style, though.  When someone is on crutches here, it’s always this version. I actually think these are better designed, and I find them kind of interesting.

crutches

Have you ever had to use this style of crutches?

August Break: Schulranzen

On By StevenIn Life In Germany5 Comments

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s picture.

School-children here all wear these giant jetpack-shaped backpacks called Schulranzen, which basically just means “satchels.”  They’re enormous and typically sort of hardshell, and they look like they hold just about the entire world.  They’ve got all kinds of designs, and they’re colorful with racing cars and ninjas and princesses and unicorns and seahorses and so forth.  When an entire class gets on a bus at once, the sea of colorful backpacks is nothing short of brilliant.

We only had bland one-color Jansport bags.  I’m a little jealous.

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schulranzen01 schulranzen02

Would you have liked these when you were a kid?

August Break: When I Said Bedroll, That’s Not What I Meant

On By StevenIn Life In Germany9 Comments

I’m on an August Break from my regular blogging schedule. Here’s today’s picture.

Living in America, I got used to bedding being flat white slabs stacked up in a mattress store.  When I moved here, I did what most people do- I went to Ikea for some affordable, necessary furniture.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that the mattresses in Ikea start out in this rolled state!

When I got it to my apartment, I had to unfurl it and let it sit open for a day or two to fully expand and air out.  I also had to get used to the bedding sizes and styles here.  I love that German couples usually have separate blankets rather than one big one that they have to fight over share… it’s quite ingenious!

2013-02-27 13.13.57

Have you ever had an Ikea bed?  Did you like it?