Post offices
Post offices (
Postämter
) are normally open Monday to
Friday 8am to 6pm and Saturday
8am to noon. A restricted range
of services is available beyond
these hours at offices in or
beside main train stations in
large cities. Outbound mail
should reach the UK within a few
days, North America in one to
two weeks and Australia over two
weeks.
Poste restante
services are available at the
main post office ( Hauptpost
) in any given town: collect it
from the counter marked Postlagernde
Sendungen (always remember
to take your passport). It's
worth asking anyone writing to
you to use this designation as
well as, or instead of, poste
restante. Incredible as it may
seem in view of the country's
reputation for super-efficiency,
many German post offices don't
understand the international
term and are likely to return a
letter to the sender marked
"address unknown".
Bear in mind also that mail is
usually only held for a couple
of weeks. If you want your mail
to be registered , ask
for it to be sent einschreiben
. Fax services are
available at large post offices,
usually at more favourable rates
than in copy shops or hotels.
Telephones
Telephoning is simple and most
kiosks are equipped with basic
instructions in several
languages, including English.
You can
call abroad from
all but those clearly marked
"National". Calling
rates
, other than to some long-haul
international destinations, vary
according to the time of day.
Within Germany, the first cheap
period begins at 6pm, the next
at 9pm, the last at 2am; within
the EU, rates are reduced
between 6pm and 8am. Some boxes
are equipped with a ringing
symbol to indicate that you can
be called back on that phone.
When using the major
international codes, remember to
omit the initial zero from the
subscriber's number.
For local calls , you
currently need to insert a
minimum of DM0.20, which will
last for a minimum of 90 seconds
at the peak daytime rate. In the
Guide , local codes are
included with each telephone
number.
At the time of writing, coins
of DM0.10, DM1 and DM5 are
accepted; only wholly unused
ones are returned. However, a
large percentage of pay phones
in Germany accept phone cards
only. These cost DM12/?6 or
DM50/?25 from post offices or
newsagents, and are well worth
buying, especially if you're
intending to call home. Another
option is to use the direct
phone service facility of
the main post office: a phone
booth will be allocated to you
from the counter marked Fremdgespräche
, which is also where you pay
once you've finished.
Email and the Internet
The Germans have
enthusiastically embraced the
Internet as the recent
proliferation of Web sites
testifies. However, the
institution of the cybercafé
- which in so many other
countries has been the principal
means by which travellers
maintain contact with home - has
failed to secure much of a
foothold. Such cafés do exist,
especially in the larger cities,
and are listed in the Rough
Guide , but their continued
existence cannot be taken for
granted, as many others have
already come and gone. Department
stores , curiously enough,
are the most reliable places to
obtain Internet access: the
Karstadt chain, which has
branches throughout the country,
is particularly good in this
respect, usually charging around
DM5/?2.50 for thirty minutes. A
small but increasing number of hotels
in all price categories are
wired up to the Net, and some of
these allow guests to surf and
send emails free of charge.
Media
Germany is well supplied with
British
newspapers : in the larger
cities it's relatively easy to
pick up most of the
London-printed editions on the
same day, with the
Financial
Times having a particularly
wide distribution. Some
US
papers , especially the
International
Herald Tribune and
USA
Today , are also readily
obtainable.
With a few exceptions, German
newspapers tend to be highly
regionalized, mixing local and
international news. Only the
liberal Frankfurter Rundschau
and Munich's Süddeutsche
Zeitung are distributed much
outside their own areas. Berlin
produces two reputable organs:
the Tagespiegel , a good
left-wing read, and the
Greenish/alternative Tageszeitung
, universally known as the Taz
. Of the national daily papers,
the two bestsellers come from
the presses of the late,
unlamented Axel Springer: Die
Welt is a right-wing
heavyweight, and the tabloid Bild
a reactionary, sleazy and
sensationalist rag. The Frankfurter
Allgemeine is again
conservative, appealing
particularly to the business
community, but follows a
politically independent line.
Germany has more magazines
than any other country in
Europe. The leftish weekly news
and current affairs magazine Der
Spiegel is the most in-depth
magazine for political analysis
and investigative journalism.
Unless your German is fluent,
though, it's a heavy and often
difficult read. Further to the
right, Die Zeit is a
wider-ranging (and to learners
of the language, easier-to-read)
alternative; Focus is
another influential weekly with
a conservative slant. Stern
is the most popular current
affairs magazine, though its
prestige took a tumble following
its publication of the forged
Hitler diaries and, more than a
decade later, has still not
entirely recovered.
German television does
not show the country at its
best, though it has an
undeniably varied output. Some
of the more serious discussion
programmes have a presentation
style that is still reminiscent
of the 1960s and early 1970s and
might as well be broadcast on
radio. Yet there are also plenty
of derivatives of the banal game
and chat shows characteristic of
present-day American and British
daytime TV, while in the late
evenings pornography that leaves
nothing to the imagination is
often broadcast. There are two
main national channels, ARD
and ZDF , plus regional
stations run by individual Länder
and a number of commercial
channels. The Austrian, Swiss,
Dutch, Danish and Polish
networks can be picked up in the
areas they border. Many houses
and hotels are equipped with satellite
or cable TV ; in such
cases, you'll have access to a
choice of British and American
channels: CNN is particularly
ubiquitous.
The only English-speaking
radio channels are the BBC
World Service (90.2FM), the
British Forces station BFBS
(98.8FM) and the dire American
Armed Forces radio station AFN
(87.6FM), which combines
American music charts with
military news. These should
continue broadcasting for at
least as long as the troops
remain.
