[Jignesh]

Originally Posted by Arunshek

how did your body and mind react to a complete change. Read in some article that it sometime it causes depression, change of mood. Have you or anyone known like that. Clinically mentioned as S.A.D (Seasonal Affective Disorder).
Not to scare you, just for my clarificaton

Hello Arun,

I always read in past that our body adjusts to the climate outside perfectly. But I experienced that after coming here. I have been here for exactly 1 year here now (1 year and 2 weeks to be precise) and not even a single day I have been down with ailments like cough or cold. While I write this it almost -1 degree outside and it is snow everywhere. But with adequate protection (read clothing) there is no issue to health here.

Further to your query, I have now seen days which are lit after 8:00 am in morning and it gets dark at 4:30 pm in evening in winter. In summer I have seen days when it is bright outside at 5:15 am and sun is still visible at 9:30 pm. But we have enjoyed both the situations and never experienced Seasonal Affective Disorder. I and my family makes a point to go out once everyday even in severe winter, this I believe helps body to adjust to climate outside. Otherwise I have seen people who stay totally indoors (with heaters set at 20+ degrees) on weekends and on Monday afternoon fall sick as mentally they are not ready to face -2 degrees outside.

As I wrote in one of the post above that life goes absolutely normal here even with 10 cm of snow outside. Yes our children feel bored sometimes in winter as playgrounds are full of snow, but it also a golden period for parents to spend quality time with them at home.

Thanks,

[Jignesh]

Hello All,

Two days back I was coming back from work in evening and was surprised to see some roads outside Wiesbaden Central Station blocked. I could not get a bus and had to walk all the way home, just like everyone else did. Upon inquiring with someone I came to know that they found a bomb .

I asked again - Bomb? and he explained - yes a bomb dropped during World War II that did not explode, it was lying underground all these years. Next day at spoke to some locals at office and I was surprised to know that it was a routine affair for them. Specially in Berlin / Hamburg area they say World War II bombs are found frequently.

According to Wikipedia, on an average 15 bombs are found everyday in Germany - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance.

Another interesting thing I saw last week was frozen lake. It may be normal to many of readers here, but to me, it was pretty astonishing. We usually go on Sundays to feed ducks at a lake in Wiesbaden and this week we were surprised see the lake frozen. Below are few pictures of the frozen lake:





My daughter standing on some part of the ice:

[sudev]

Live bomb!! Surprising that statistic from wikipedia. Must be some one digging for a new building etc. came across this.

[srivatsahg]

Originally Posted by Jignesh

Hello All,

Two days back I was coming back from work in evening and was surprised to see some roads outside Wiesbaden Central Station blocked. I could not get a bus and had to walk all the way home, just like everyone else did. Upon inquiring with someone I came to know that they found a bomb .

I asked again - Bomb? and he explained - yes a bomb dropped during World War II that did not explode, it was lying underground all these years. Next day at spoke to some locals at office and I was surprised to know that it was a routine affair for them. Specially in Berlin / Hamburg area they say World War II bombs are found frequently.

Yeah I still remember my days in Stuttgart between 2009-11. We had three separate incidents asking us not to take certain routes on specified dates for removing the unexploded shells. In fact on one particular fateful incident the arm of the JCB blew up while retrieving the unexploded shell.

[Jignesh]

Originally Posted by sudev

Live bomb!! Surprising that statistic from wikipedia. Must be some one digging for a new building etc. came across this.

Exactly. They had demolished an existing building and were digging to build base for new building.

Originally Posted by srivatsahg

Yeah I still remember my days in Stuttgart between 2009-11.

Surprisingly when I spoke to locals here, they are pretty casual about it. They say this is a regular affair and authorities ensure that unexploded bombs are taken off safely.

Couple of years back there was a incident in near Munich where it was not possible to take the bomb to a safe location so they evacuated thousands of people and let the bomb explode at the place it was. Nobody was injured but couple of surrounding buildings did suffered some damage.

Another thing local people told me was that many times unexploded bombs from Germany are also found in countries like UK & Russia.

Wikipedia statistics are quite astonishing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexploded_ordnance and also thought provoking. It also has the link to the Munich detonation that I mentioned above.

Thanks,

[Sn1p3r]

Hi Jignesh,

Wonderful to see you, Isp, Spike, daredevil and many other team bhp members well settled in Germany.

I will soon be in FFM and I would like to understand the procedure of getting a second hand car to start with. We have opted to live in the country and hopefully will add to the pictures here.

Cheers!

[dar3dev|l]

Hello Sn1p3r,

Getting a used car is quite an experience (or was one at-least for me) and the process is pretty much the same as how we do it in India only thing you need to take care about is your local license and your credit history incase you wish to purchase the car on loan, which depends on how much time you have spent in Germany. I for one had a really hard time getting bank approve the loan since it had been just 2 months in Germany.

The procedure starts with searching for the car either online (http://www.autoscout24.de or http://www.mobile.de being the top resources), visiting third party dealer shop or by visiting the car manufacturer showroom directly. But don't expect the sales guys to be as proactive as in India, you have to tell them the car you are interested in and the top limit of your budget. Usually these dealers are open for negotiation for a few hundreds or offer other kind of benefits. What i managed was getting a free TUV check and fluids top-up's before taking the delivery of the car.

Once you have chosen your car, comes the part to check the documentation. If you are buying directly from the owner you need to be a bit careful about checking the service history, TUV (this is important document which is renewed every two years for ensuring your car is road worthy). All the documents are sorted most by the dealer or the showroom and differs for direct buyers. One more thing you need to check while choosing your car is the set of Summer and Winter tires. Here in Germany, you have to change your tires every 6 months and usually a used car comes with a set of both (and if the previous owner used both). These days you also get cars with 4 season tires which can be used round the year but locals here prefer having 2 sets, 1 for each season.

For bank loans, usually the dealers and showroom guys do a direct spot check with their banks and let you know the decision either approved or not. However, before doing that you would need to work with them the monthly payments you wish to pay and the amount of down payment. You can also ask for your bank for a loan directly and then use that money to purchase the car. I dont know how the bank hypothecation works here as I never explored that option. Buying a used car from car manufacturer IMO offers a low rate of interest than reaching out to the banks via the dealers. When I was shopping for a used car with Audi and VW were offering 0.99% and BMW was offering 3.99%. If you are working for large organizations, these manufacturers have other "special" offers too.

Apart from the above the only thing to finally take care is applying for car registration, the Insurance and Tax which are based on the CO2 emission of the car. If you are taking the car insurance for the first time it is usually very high since you have no experience on german roads and thus higher the risk. I had taken the insurance from my office consultant so don't know how it is to approach directly to the insurance companies.

This is more or less what I went thru while my first used car purchase

Do feel free to post your queries and i would try my best to answer them

All the best with your search.

[SPIKE ARRESTOR]

Hi Sn1p3r , dar3devIl has pretty much summed up everything but if you have any specific queries, feel free to ask. One thing which he failed to mention, by law, if you buy a car from dealer (handler), then you get a guarantee by default, from private sellers there is no such thing offered. Avoid buying cars from Turkish dudes. And if diesel, only Euro IV with "Grün Plakat" and above.

Spike