Andrey Shilov at WordPress

Buying railway ticket online? Of course!

I tried it twice in Germany – both times with a problem, with a scandal, loosing money. Unbelievable!

Last time I chose the train and time, wrote my bank card number, got a confirmation by email. Is it the end? It’s the beginning!

Then one has to click a link in the email, write login and password, see the word “e-ticket” – and print it? Wrong answer!

-It is not a ticket, – I was told in the train on my way from Berlin to Munich.

-Why not a ticket? It is written here – “e-ticket”. Here is my name, destination, my seat number…

-It is not a ticket. You had to print out the ticket.

I had to pay second time, with cash, right in the train.

Later I learnt that one more step should have been made. You get the email, click the link, write your login and passwod, get the page with “e-ticket” and all other info – and click one more time. Then print it out.

Triple protection!

Today’s story.

My friends came to Berlin from Russia. Well I am experienced guy! I found the site, wrote passenger’s name, paid with my bank card, got confirmation by email, clicked the link, wrote login and password, and clicked, and clicked one more time. And printed out.

I just got a call from my friends from the train: “It’s not working!”

According to the rules of “Deutsche Bahn”, passenger must pay for his ticket himself.

-Why? – I was shouting on the phone. – It is unconvenient! It is inhuman! What’s the difference for you?

-It is the rule and I have to follow it. Your friends refused to pay and will be taken out from the train.

So that’s how I heard about rules in Germany for the first time.

But this story is not about Germans. Russians see unconvenience and dullness in their country often enough, too.

I have been flying with German “Air Berlin” for about three years and I never had any problems with paying, registering, showing documents etc. You write your bank card number – that’s all. No clicking, no passwords, no printing. You paid it. All the rest is the company’s business.

Sometimes it is so plain simple:

there is private business caring about customers,

and there are state behemoths who don’t give a spit about clients. They follow their own rules. The other day the head of “Deutsche Bahn” resigned with a scandal but it won’t change anything: there are no other companies one can use when travelling from Berlin to Hannover.

The rules of market and monopolies are the same everywhere.

Lada was a dream for Eastern Germans. Indeed, one would dream even about a Soviet car when there are just cardboard Trabants around you. When the Wall fell normal cars from the West arrived and Volkswagen even built a plant in former GDR.

But I noticed an interesting thing while making a report about today’s sales of Lada in Germany.

Right after the reunification Eastern Germans despised Lada: a communist car, from the USSR… But demand reappeared after some time. Nowadays 60% of all German sales are in the former West Germany and 40% in the former East one – approximately equal to the territory ratio.

So the Soviet shade disappeared during the 20 years. The image has been reinvented, so to say. Now it is just an inexpensive car standing close to Suzukis and Kias in car sales centres. It is far not a leader on the market: just 2400 Ladas were bought in Germany last year while its population is 82 mln. But still people buy it: ”A car for the youth”, “low price”, “a second or a third car for your family”.

Dark legacy of the past disappears during just one generation time. At least on the market.

Some topics are supposed to unite people but it doesn’t always work. For example, world’s “green worry” doesn’t exist in Russia at all compared to other countries. Indeed, a typical story about wind energy in Germany had to wait it’s turn to be shown in my company’s news for more than a month. But the “crisis” suddenly worked: nothing unites Russia and the world better than news about crisis and the way people cope with it. Who the hell in Russia would be interested in some German car-sharing companies? Or some German tricks to boost consumer interest in cars? Now we are making the third story about cars in Germany during  just a couple of months – and all this thanks to a simple approach: how do they deal with the crisis?

Common values, so to say.

Thank you, crisis!

Nobody reproached me while I was walking along the former Berlin Wall and made a report about today’s perception of it. Even though so many people were killed when trying to cross it, the city and the country are still divided, and it was over just 19 years ago.

Nobody said a word about Soviet ideology, communists from Moscow etc.

As if the Wall appeared from nowhere and vanished by itself.

We didn’t have long discussions with people on the street but if I were asked by a television crew about the Wall I would have mentioned the Soviet authorities, if not the USSR. At least I would have asked back a Russian journalist, “what do you feel?”

So if I ask myself the question – I am ashamed. And I am really interested how many Russians share the feeling.

Old Soviet planes AN-2 fly above Berlin regularly these days, it is actually the high season. Till Thursday, October 30, when Tempelhof airport closes down.

Here is our ticket. And that’s what AN-2 itself looks like.

This particular plane was made in Poland in 1968 – the pilots say the bi-planes were made in two places outside the USSR – in Poland and in China.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there are 9 passenger seats in this AN-2. It used to be a training plane for skydivers during the GDR times, later it has been transformed for sightseeing flights and the seats have been added. As a tenth passenger I got a seat near the pilot…

…but everybody wanted to see everything and take pictures…

so we swapped places and others could enjoy the view.

Old Soviet planes flying above the Brandenburg Gate wouldn’t be nice memories for the Germans, I presume. So we didn’t fly towards the Berlin center.

Tempelhof is situated to the south from the center and the sightseeing route goes away from it. Actually AN-2 has been designed after the WWII, in 1947, and has being produced ever since. The AN-2 history site claims the plane is even in the Guinness World Records Book. Well I don’t know whether it is true but AN-2 is indeed a classic for Russians. “Annushka” is a tender name for it (sounds just like a diminutive from the name Anna); “kukuruznik” (to be pronounced “kookoorooznik”) is a common name, it comes from the word “kukuruza” (“maize” or “corn”). AN-2 is universal and has been used a lot as an agriculturial aeroplane. It works quite well as a tourist plane, too – personal ventilation tools are particularly impressive.

So no Reichstag or Brandenburg gate in view – the only real “Berlin thing” we noticed was the television tower. I will show it in my report on NTV on Friday and will give the link to the video here, too.

UPD Here is the link. 

And tomorrow we will look at the deceased one from the sky (if we are lucky with weather).

I don’t understand anything in chess. So at the World Chess Championship (where I had to make a short report from) I was rather interested in details.

Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik sit behind a dark net, like a mosquito one, but huge, from the floor to the ceiling. The hall is dim and the net is virtually unnoticeable.
“In Elista we had a glass wall!” – a girl from press-service said.
The purpose of all the tricks is to defend the players from possible influence by the audience (whatever the influence could be).

The game is shown online for the first time. But logging-in is not free, even for the accredited journalists.
-How come? Why? – I asked at the press-center.
-What do you mean, – they asked me. –How do you want it to be?
-Well I want it to be free.
-No. It is our marketing measure.

Whatever they mean by marketing pleasure, sorry, measure – their “online game” site (for 10 eu) doesn’t seem to be the only one. There is live game on the website of the Championship, a Russian newspaper arranged something similar on its website and Indian media, I am sure, have something, too. Ok, one cannot see the players through “unofficial” sites but who needs players? The game is about moves, if I know something about chess. All the bonuses like “comments, interviews and press conferences” are mainly for the press, of course. So it is actually a form of accreditation fee.

If I manage to be in Bonn during the last game I will definitely ask whether any statistics about the website is available. Marketing should have some results, shouldn’t it.

You land in an unknown city, take a taxi in airport, say the address and name of a hotel. Taxi driver calls somebody and says he can’t take you right to the hotel and will stop at some distance. Ok, you agree, I will walk.
You arrive to a street, see road signs towards your hotel and people blocking the street. You approach them and for some reason they start singing before you say a word. Women in their 40s -50s, they wave their hands and show you can’t go through. You show them you suitcase, you say you are going to a hotel but they stand firm in a few rows and sing exactly because you are near them.
You go to another street, there are young people, different people there but the result is the same – no way through.
One more street. No way.
It is Saturday. You woke up at 6 and spent a couple of hours in airport because your flight was delayed. The working day is ahead but the people stand and smile and explain, “there are Nazis there” (they point somewhere behind themselves) “and we don’t let anybody go there”.
- There is my hotel there.
- Nobody goes there, – they say it politely, with a smile.
- I just arrived. I have a reservation in the hotel.
- You can join us or wait in a café.
- I have to work.
- Nobody can go there.

So what would you feel then?
And would you change your mind when you learn why they are there?

P.S. I knew the reason and was ready for all that. They were blocking all the streets around Heumarkt, a square in German city of Cologne, in order to cancel an “anti-Islamisation rally” there. In the end I went through when showed my press card. But I wonder how would a regular business traveler feel.
P.P.S. The rally was cancelled in the end.

Spain vs. Germany, the break after the first half. The biggest fan zone in the centre of Vienna. Fans are mixed, their amount is approximately equal.

A “presenter” is shouting from the stage:
-Espana!
-A-a-a-ah!
-Deutschland!
-A-a-a-ah!

Both parties are shouting as loud but Spanish sound much higher, Germans lower.
It is so clear as if they made a deal!
Amazing.

An advertisement in Basel during EURO-2008:

There is a German expression “Frauen an die Macht” (something like “Women get the power”). Now it is “Women get the ball”.

An ordinary shop is running the campaign, even not a sport clothes or sport equipment store. The guys felt the Zeitgeist and made a football “A-Z”: “What is football?” Football pitch?” “How many players?”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her recent interview sounded as a representative of all women fans when she said she has been watching football games since she got a TV set in the 60s. After attending a football match she said, “When I’m watching at home I comment even more but I don’t jump up as much.”

We filmed in Basel before the first game. There were some women in the crowd, not much, about 5% – but they were not necessarily with boyfriends or husbands, there were girls gangs, too.

It looks like a carnival not less than like a sport event. Perhaps that’s what makes it so interesting.