Too Far Afield

Today I finally managed to buy a BahnCard. It is issued by our national railway company and allows you to safe up to 100% of the price of a ticket. Of course I only bought BahnCard 50 for the 2nd class, which gives me a 50% discount on any 2nd class railway ticket for one year. The 100% card is too expensive. It doesn’t pay off for me.
At first, I intended to buy the card online, but it isn’t possible to get a student discount, if you buy online. So I stopped by the Reisezentrum (travel centre) on my way to the city for some Christmas shopping.
Unfortunately, I forgot to bring a photo. No problem, the officer said, but I need to take a photo of you now. This is part of our service, you don’t need to pay an extra fee for it, she added.
After she had taken a photo of me with a digital camera that seemed to be an old one from Medion, I told her that I really appreciated it and that I was surprised that they even offered such a service. Well, she said in a very official way, this is a special service of our Dienststelle (authority). We originally used Polaroid pictures. It isn’t offered all over Germany.

There are actually some branches of German railway that resist the overall tendency and seem to be commited to provide really great customer service. Still, the tone of the employee was very official. At all times, I didn’t have the impression that I bought a train ticket at a private company, but that I applied for some kind of formal document at a Bundesbehörde (federal authority). Also, I feel a bit like all those involuntary Jamba customers. I meant to buy a single BahnCard, but what I actually bought, was a subscription. I need to cancel 6 weeks in advance, if I don’t want to get (and pay for) a new one. It seems that Deutsche Bahn combines the worst of both worlds (private and public sector).

PS: I’m currently looking for partners at a new company. The company will be called Sunny Railway GbR. If you travel with German railway frequently, but a BahnCard 100 is still too expensive for you, contact me for more information.

Suppose you’ve got an Eumex telephone system. You’ve got a few extensions, which are configured as phone extensions in the dial plan. You’ve got an extension that is configured as a fax/modem extension in the dial plan. Now you plug a fax modem into the fax extension of your Eumex. You haven’t used the fax modem since the nineties and you are not sure it does work at all. To test your setup, you dial the number of one of your phone extensions. Now the phone extension rings and you know that everything is ok. Merely a matter of very few minutes. Right? Wrong! Eumex tries to be smart. It “knows” that you try to call a phone number from a fax number. And that must be a mistake of the user. Eumex will not let you do this. While Eumex “thinks” that it is not a problem to call the number of your own extension, Eumex “thinks” it is a serious problem, if you want to call a phone extension from a fax extension. It won’t let you. It will always give you a busy signal.

In my mind’s eye I see the numbers of users, who, years after installation, decided to get rid of their fax machine and plug in a phone instead. How much time will be burned until they notice why they can’t call other in-house extensions?

Good morning … from Hamburg. I’m feeling a bit like the protagonist of this Cluseo song at the moment. Anyway, if you’re awaiting email from me, you will probably receive my answer before Christmas. Just give me some time to struggle through the pile of mail. In not so related news, Hamburg is looking for a new data protection officer. When I first heard of this, I thought it would be a good idea, if M. applied for this position. I wish someone like him will be appointed. The geek shall inherit the earth. As current senator of justice, Till Steffen will conduct the interviews. If we’re all lucky, eventually, Hamburg will get a real, independent data protection officer, like the one in Schleswig-Holstein. You think that the independent doesn’t really make a difference? Probably not, but I’ve listened to both the former Hamburg officer and the independent Kiel officer talking about privacy and data protection. And it made a difference ;). If nothing else, it has a symbolic value at least.