arsenal21

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Posts posted by arsenal21

  3. Posted

    I don't work for Ryanair but it seems like a daft reason when you were already late for the flight through no fault of the airline. I'm not sure do the check-in staff even work for the airline, they may be airport employers. Do you still fly through Schoenefeld?

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  4. Posted

    7 hours ago, El Jeffo said:

    Anyone can be affected by a flight delay, but the systematic stranding of people by canceling scheduled flights for no apparent reason (other than some vague "wanting to improve on-time performance") is almost criminal and deserves to be heavily sanctioned.

     

    As to "saying they'll never fly Ryanair again": around 15 years ago, my wife and I were supposed to fly from Schönefeld to London, to see a Robbie Williams appearance in connection with London Fashion Week. The trip was a birthday present. We planned to be at the airport 2 hours ahead of time, but due to Deutsche Bahn leaving an entire S-Bahn train stopped between stations for over an hour, we ultimately got to the Schönefeld S-Bahn about 35 minutes before the scheduled departure time, or 5 minutes before they closed the gate. I literally sprinted the 1.2 kilometers to the terminal (my wife followed at a brisk pace with our suitcase) and arrived at the counter just in time to see the Ryanair employee put up a "Check-in closed" sign in my face. I quickly said that our train was delayed, and that there were at least 20 other people on the train with us - several of whom arrived as I was arguing with the woman - and could they please re-open the check-in under those circumstances.

     

    She said we'd have to take it up with the operations manager, who was on the first floor of terminal B (we were on the ground floor of terminal A). So like a bad Keystone Cops movie, we all run to the escalator and over to terminal B, asking everyone we could if they knew where the Ryanair operations manager's office was located. Person after person just shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but the 8th person we asked said, no, of course he's not here, he's on the ground floor next to terminal A. It turns out the dumb bitch gave us wrong directions just to get us out of her hair, and the operations manager was actually right next door to the counters (she sent us running in the opposite direction).

     

    In any case, by the time the now 20-strong mob of people had found and stormed the operations manager's office, demanding that he let us on the flight, he simply threw up his hands and declared that the plane had already backed away from the gate, so there was nothing else he could do.

     

    The only other flight that would have gotten us to London in time for the concert was on BA, flying from Tegel, which cost €450 each. So we ended up eating the concert tickets and missing out on the trip. Our only consolation was that we managed to cancel the hotel reservation without penalty and also got our flights mostly refunded since most of the price was tax and they hadn't implemented their refund handling fees yet.

     

    We still refuse to fly with them to this day.

     

    tl;dr: Fuck Ryanair. Fuck them right in the ass.

    But you still take S-Bahns, right?

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  6. Posted

     @kiplette, sorry I was up late writing and was not so clear, what I meant about the after-school activities was the kid has sports in a Verein about 3 days a week.

     

    There are AGs as you suggest, but how to convince a preteen chess or ballet are more interesting than the path of least resistance (Woozle Goozle, Minecraft, Whatsapp, Super Mario Kart etc.) is the next question.

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  8. Posted

    52 minutes ago, emilysium said:
    13 hours ago, emilysium said:

     

     

    I'm not German; I'm not even religious. The child of my boyfriends half brother is being baptized, and I have no idea what we're supposed to give them. A gift? Religiously themed or no? Money? How much money? 

     

    Must we go to the ceremony or is it acceptable to mail a gift? If we don't go, do we still get them a gift? 

     

    As a note, this last christmas I hand drew some Christmas cards. The girlfriend (of my boyfriends half-brother), opened it, complained that there wasn't any money inside, and then silently went to open her gifts from us (also without thanks - for our gifts they had given us Nivea bath sets and we thanked them of course). I'm a little tempted to never give her any money for any situation ever but I'm not sure if that's rude. 

    We don't want to go. We don't like them. We don't want to spend 8 hours on a train going back to forth to a religious ceremony we don't believe in. 

     

    My boyfriend is a phd student. I gave all my savings to my mother to buy a house in the US and I am unemployed in Germany. We have a 1 year old child. We just moved to a new city. We don't have time, money, or energy to spare. 

     

    Now, if there is no halfway socially acceptable circumstance to not go...

     

    To acknowledge our child's existence, my future half brother in law gave us 20 euros and a card that said it's for "windelngeld." Can't we do the same? Disregarding that we actually already brought them burts bees clothing from the US for their child's birth. Sigh...I know it's petty to keep track.

     

    My boyfriend doesn't have a strong relationship with his brother, outside of having sometimes playing video games together growing up. His brother appears to be somewhere on the autism spectrum and is difficult to talk to and impossible to connect with emotionally. The girlfriend is boorish and every bad stereotype of a "villager." I also hate that the girlfriend treats me like I'm stupid because I have a strong accent and my german isn't perfect. I think I may be the only foreigner she's ever met in her entire life, and it's really frustrating to be treated like I'm dumb by someone who im sure has never heard of the American university I went to and possibly not even the german university I went to. I would really love to avoid if possible. 

     

    https://www.evangelisch.de/inhalte/113530/04-04-2013/kindertaufe-wer-kann-pate-werden

     

    Here's your get out of jail free card. Say your not religious and it would be very embarrassing for everybody if the Pfarrer refused to let you be a godparent, without you pledging to give him 7% of your taxes for the rest of your life etc etc.

     

    And as a present, send the appropriate fee for a Kichenaustrit:)

     

    Edit - sorry the quotes are messed up - is anyone ever going to fix that?

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  9. Posted

    Ok, primary school kids have Hort but secondary school kids finish up around lunchtime while their hardworking parents have to work until 5 or 6pm. Homework seems to be out of fashion nowadays, so what do your kids do?

     

    Do they come home and play Splatoon for 4 hours or go to the skate park with their buddies? Are there any other options? What is best from a child development perspective?

     

    Does the homework load increase as they move up the grades or coming up to exams? (Please say yes...)

     

    Note there are after school activities but they tend to start at 5 or 6, so there is still a 3-4 hour gap.

     

    Back in Ireland, the school day lasts until around 4 for secondary students and I recall having 3 hours of homework as a minimum so I'm kind of baffled by the German system.

     

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  13. Posted

    They are more than likely bumpy/gravel/grassy tracks, so it might not be comfortable unless you have a mountain bike. As to whether it's allowed, well the cops won't stop you, forest rangers probably won't either, worst I'd expect is some Germanic grumbling from grey-haired walkers.

     

    So if you see any walkers, slow down, give them right of way, don't ring the bell for them to get out of your way etc.

     

    Unless they're Nordic walkers, in which case feel free to batter them with their walking poles. Hate Nordic walkers, I do...

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  16. Posted

    33 minutes ago, sneaker said:

    But it doesn't mean you have to cross in 2 seconds. You only have to step onto the street within those 2 seconds.

     

    Took me a while to get used to that here. Back in Ireland when the little man switches back to red, you have to get off the crossing pretty sharpish.

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  17. Posted

    11 hours ago, Alexnf said:

    I had posted a lot on the topic here:

     

    Wildlachs can also be Atlantik salmon(as in wild caught)  which is the same exact species as the farmed one, but it is a very rare case. An when you find wild caught atlantik salmon it is very expensive. 95% of the Market's Atlantik salmon is farmed and not the best (read the link with my previous comments) . However there are wild caught Atalntik ones from Scotland, Ostsee (especially Rügen), Denmark (I know first hand because I fish them during the season :D ) and a few more places.

     

    On the other hand the Pacific salmon is 99% wild caught and represents 99,9% of the Wildlachs you find, You can also find it as Alaskan salmon, Canada Salmon, Sockeye ,etc etc it is much deeper red and doesn't have that pronounced white ribboning that the atlantik one as.

     

    Seelachs is indeed pollock, which of course has nothing to do with Salmonidae family. It belongs to Gadidae like Cod.

     

     

    Yep, when it says wildlachs it's usually Pacific salmon, and there are different types of this.

     

    Chum salmon is not particularly nice and is usually smothered in cheese/tomato/herbs and sold as "Toscana" or "Provencal".

     

    Sockeye is very red.

     

    It should give the Latin name on the packaging; salmo salmar is the normal Atlantic salmon,  anything with onchorhynchus is Pacific.

     

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncorhynchus

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  20. Posted

    1 hour ago, klubbnika said:

    Yes, and we don't know how "grab the pussy" affected the elections either.

    Those are only theories, based on historical research.

    For THIS particular elections, one still needs to conduct some studies to verify or reject this theory.

     

    To my mind, Trump just got lucky in winning the elections. It's stupid voting system that made it possible.

    Otherwise, as we all know, the majority of people voted for Clinton.

     

    I don't think it's a theory, or hypothesis, you can accept or reject no matter how many studies you do. "What if" questions belong to the world of fiction, not history. "What if Germany won the war?" = Fatherland, a novel, not history.

     

    Questions like "Does this drug help prevent asthma?" can be answered more or less definitively using scientific methods but not "Did this info swing the election?".

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  23. Posted

    On Wed Nov 30 18:08:03, Eupathic Impulse said:

    I mean the whole Australian answer involves, basically, buying a country, and then pretending that it's not your territory and out of the jurisdiction of your courts and constitution. Then building a prison for people who, by the way, are recognized refugees, effectively creating a unique exception to legal refugee handling.

     

    Europe does not have a nearby country it can buy like that.  That's aside from the horror of the concept itself.

     

    There's one and a bit islands off the coast of Europe that might be going cheap in a few years time...and with no pesky human rights charter to worry about.

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  24. Posted

    There are two types of birthday party that I've been to in Germany. Buffet food and drinks afterwards OR everybody sitting around the table in the apartment, eating raw meat and various types of sausages and sharing a bottle of beer. But they were typically family affairs rather than a group of friends.

     

    For my 40th I invited friends for drinks but I bought dinner for one guy who hadn't eaten.

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  25. Posted

    9 hours ago, michelbisson said:

     If you cross the street and forget to look in certain direction for incoming cars, that doesn't give the right to drivers to intentionally run you over because you made the mistake. The law forces the driver to stop even if you were negligent in crossing the street.

     

     

     

    I wouldn't recommend testing this on an actual German street as German drivers may be much less willing to stop than you hypothesise.

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