8th Aug, 2014
I’m sitting here in the van stripped down to a pair of shorts (sorry – probably too much information!). It’s 21:30 and 29°C and I’ve just taken a shower after the 7km bike ride back from Bamberg. I’m waiting until midnight’ish before I can go to bed because the electricity supply arrangement on this otherwise good Stellpatz, is €1 for 8hrs worth of supply. All in all, not a bad deal on the face of it. You could power a blast furnace if you wanted to, but only for 8hrs. All I want to do is charge the laptop, smartphones & tablets. The solar panel on the roof will bring the van’s leisure battery back up to full power by mid-morning, so I don’t even need to rely on the mains supply for that.
Our fridge will happily run from any of – gas (running a little low until I can get to a petrol station that sells LPG); 12V (when the engine’s running); or from mains power. But it’s dumb insofar as it won’t automatically switch to whatever supply is available – it needs a human (or trained monkey – but they’re in short supply) to switch it to whatever is the preferred energy source. It runs most efficiently from mains and – as I might have mentioned – the gas is getting a little low.
So if I were to insert my €1 now and switch the fridge to mains supply (and plug in all our devices that need charging), I’d need to get up at 05:30 when the mains switches off, to either…
- Get up, go outside and feed the machine again, or
- Get up, switch the fridge to gas.
Either way, I’d be getting up at 05:30. 05:30 is a perfectly nice time. I have nothing against 05:30. I just don’t want to get up at that time. So I’ll wait until midnight, feed the machine & then get up at a slightly more sensible 08:00 to switch back to gas.
All of this is by way of suggesting that not everything in Germany is perfectly thought out and executed. They may not be the masters of the universe in all respects.
The problem with 8hrs mains supplies however, pales into utter insignificance compared with the utter backwardness of public Internet availability. Maybe we’re spoilt back in the UK, but it seems to be de-rigeur these days for just about every pub, library, cafe, restaurant, swimming pool, coffee house, service station (at cost, of course) et al to offer free WiFi Internet connectivity, albeit often of dubious quality. But at least, it’s available. In Germany – the most technologically advanced country in Europe, where even most urinals automatically flush themselves after your passage – my phone has failed to pick up a single WiFi access point – free or secured. Nada. Nichts.
This has meant that researching one’s next stop is impossible. Even checking the bus or train timetables can’t be done. Not to mention updating this blog. All that is taken for-granted back home. If you don’t have internet connectivity, you’re doomed to the dark ages (and missed buses). So I had to look for ways of getting some kind of mobile Internet access…
My mobile provider back home (T-Mobile) does offer a roaming data tariff whilst abroad. It used to cost £3 per 100MBy per day – which actually isn’t such a bad rate, and I have used it a couple of time. Trouble is, uploading photos to the blog tends to burn up 100Mby fairly quickly – and that’s after I edit all my photos to reduce the size prior to publishing them. Also, last weekend when I decided I needed something better, T-Mobile was saying (on my phone) that there were no further optional “boosters” (as they call them) available to me., until I got a marketing text message from them on Monday offering a new service of £3 per 50MBy/day or £5 per 100Mby/day, or £15 per 500MBy for 7 days. I.e. pretty much a doubling of costs, so they’ve excluded themselves from the competition.
Now researching smartphone Internet deals is pretty difficult with no Internet access. However, during the brief pre-burn-up time of my 100Mby, I managed to find a blog all about mobile phone Internet providers in Germany (in English!). One of the (apparently) best deals is offered by a German supermarket chain – Edeka. €9.95 for 500Mby in 30days. So I bit the bullet whilst in Edeka in Ehningen, and bought myself an Edeka SIM card for €10 that allegedly had €10-worth of credit on it. It uses the Vodaphone network here in Germany which – allegedly – is about the best (sorry about all the “apparently’s” and “allegedly’s”).
I eventually managed to remove the SIM card from my Google handset (the tool for this is at home, of course) and insert the Edeka SIM card. Now I’ve never had a pre-paid tariff before, so am very naive with how these things work. Add to which, all the instructions were (understandably) in German. I thought I’d managed to figure it out. There’s a toll-free number to call that connects with an automated system to register your new SIM card. The system didn’t recognise the SIM card/phone number combination. Fell at the 1st hurdle. However, the system didn’t give up on me, it connected me with a very helpful (real) person who took the details and assured me that everything was hunky-dory. She also confirmed that the €10 free credit could be used for the data tariff (as opposed to phone calls & SMS messages.
The SIM card wasn’t working: Internet access simply wasn’t available. Back to the free phone number. Ah-ha! There was an option to change my tariff to “500Mby in 30 days for €10”. Done. Within seconds, I received a text message saying that my data tariff would be available as soon as I received confirmation of having registered my “account”. What account would that be? It’s a blasted pre-pay phone. And I was told the initial credit could be used for the 500Mby in 30days bit.
I then noticed that I had an Internet connection. Hooray! But my rejoicing was premature: the internet connection was burning up my “free” €10 at a rate of €0.24/Mby. I.e. the phone, rather than the data tariff. It was gone within 5 minutes.
So now, a long way away from the Edeka I know in Ehningen, I need to locate another branch of Edeka here in Bamberg in order to buy a top-up – this without any Internet connection; I can’t simply Google it.
Later…
We found an Edeka yesterday after a long bike ride on a mission. And they sold top-up cards. Guess what? The top-up cards are either €15 or €25. How does that work with my €10 per 500MBy per month tariff? No-one was able to explain.
Last night, I registered my top up, set up my phone as an Internet access point for my laptop, and wrote some stuff for the blog (not yet published). At midnight (see earlier electrical supply discussions), I went to bed.
This morning – just for a laugh, and because it’s a toll-free call – I called to check the balance on my account. They don’t tell you how many MBy you’ve used or have left; they tell you how much monetary credit you have left. €2.30 in this case. That’s equivalent to having used 375MBy within a few hours. Not impressed.
I think that what’s happened is that my laptop – running Microsoft’s mega-bloatware Windows 7 – managed to sneak in a quick Windows security update to supposedly patch yet another gaping security hole in their extensively quality-controlled operating system. Bugger. I’ve now set my laptop NOT to do any Windoze updates. I’ve also told Android on my phone NOT to do any background activity when not connected by WiFi.
That was one expensive Windoze update.
One day, I’ll have it all sorted and be able to tell you all about Würtzburg and Bamberg. Keep your eyes open, but don’t hold your breath. And in case you’re wondering; I write all this stuff offline, then upload it when I’m lucky enough to have a connection!