Life In Germany #3

Since kitchens are small and people go to the market frequently, the fridges have to be small. Our kitchen fridge is what I'd call a good size beer fridge at university. We got an extra fridge and put it in the basement as a backup for things like milk, juice, fresh veggies and meat.
Recycling is a way of life. Each neighbourhood has a "Green Point" where you take your paper, cardboard and glass and dump it into big bins. They pick up compost, grass cuttings, metal and plastic at curbside, using special clear plastic bags you buy at the market. Garbage is placed curbside in special grey plastic bags you buy at the market, but they cost about $1.16 each in a roll of 15, so you're paying the garbage fees with each bag. The bags hold about 5 gallons each and it's unusual to see more than one garbage bag in front of a house on pickup day. I just can't see people in Austin trying to limit their garbage to 5 gallons a week!
The milk containers are rectangular 1 liter plasticized cardboard. We usually buy 12 at a time because you get only a few glasses of milk out of each one. The packaging seems excessive when you think about how focused they are on recycling. If they changed to the plastic jugs used in the US or even the bags used in Canada I think it would be much easier to recycle.
Bikes! Everyone rides bikes to get around town or for a bit of exercise on a nice day. Sometimes there are traffic jams with bikes and dogs on the trails through the fields on the other side of the river.
Public transport consists of an extensive network of buses and trams/subways. The general problem is the system is set up like the spokes of a bike and you have to go all the way into the city to go back out another spoke. My work is 15 minutes by car but over an hour by tram due to this effect.

Most yards are very small so you need only very small lawnmowers! This is the one I got, the smallest one at the hardware store. You can look for the Fisher-Price or Playskool logo, but it's actually real! The blade is 10" long and it has an 800 watt electic motor which at 220 volts works really well, even in the long grass recently in my back yard. The mower cost about $50 and the cord to plug it in cost $20. I should have put a Coke can on it for reference, but the base is about the size of an upright vacuum cleaner.


	Ikea has a very large store here in town which is always mobbed with people. They just opened a new store next to the old one and they're tearing the old one down I think to make room for more parking. We've bought all of our extra furniture there as most German apartments and houses don't have closets - you have to buy free-standing wardrobes.