AllThingsGerman.net » Signs

The Deutschmark lives on!

Graham — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:57:32 +0000

We may have stopped paying with the Deutsche Mark 8 years ago, but every now and then I see a shop that still accepts the old currency.

My latest sighting was in the pedestrian precinct in Oberursel:

And apparently this shop is not the only one in the town!

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Narrow and low clearance sings

Graham — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:18:17 +0000

Seen at one of the town gates in Horb a.N.

The sign is next to one of the town gates and shows that traffic coming out of the town has priority, and that the clearance through the gate is only 3.30m

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A confusing sign for Cyclists

Graham — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:10:48 +0000

Here’s a confusing sign of you’re a cyclist:

1. This is part of a marked out cycle route – recognisable by the green bicycle with the arrow.

2. But it’s for pedestrians only – see the white mother and child on a blue background.

3. So cyclists should dismount – “Radfahrer absteigen”

4. Oh, and it’s private property anyway – “Privatgrundstück”, but you can still push your bicycle across it at your own risk – “Betreten auf eigene Gefahr!”.

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Which side of the sign can I park?

Graham — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 14:58:29 +0000

This road sign means that you cannot park or wait on the side of the road where the sign is, on the sides of the sign pointed to by the arrow:

It is usually placed at the side of the road so that the sign is parallel to the road with the arrow pointing left in the direction of the traffic. With both arrows you cannot park on either side of it.

Somewhere there is usually another one with a single arrow to mark the end of the restriction, and you often see this sign in turning circles on housing estates.

If the measure is only temporary, then it has a sign below with the effective dates:

So I was quite confused the other day when I wanted to park in this road:

The signs are not pointing up or down the road, but across it! But even if they were standing so that the arrows pointed along rather than across the road, something else is still wrong.

The sign in the background only has one arrow, and it does not point to the one in the foreground. So whilst the first sign tells me not to park on the right of it, the second one tells me that it is OK on that side, but not on its right!

In fact there was a third one in this chain that was just the same. I’m sure that the local residents didn’t have a clue which side they were meant to be parking on. A number of the cars that were parked between the signs had apparently been there when the signs were put up, but I’m told that this was not a problem as it turned out that the secondary signs had been left off – and the parking restriction was not due to start for another three days!

But still, when confronted with a situation like this, what’s the best thing to do?

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Who was Lina Himmelhuber?

Graham — Thu, 20 May 2010 17:37:29 +0000

Listeners to The Monday Podcast may remember that in an early episode we took a walk around the building sites in the area. One of those has now received its name and is called “Lina-Himmelhuber-Strasse”.

I was unaware of this until I came across the name a few days ago and decided to look up where the street is. My immediate questions was, “who was Lina Himmelhuber”?

The obvious place to start looking was in either Google or Wikipedia. But whilst the latter does not currently have any entries about Frau Himmelhuber, Google at least provides a partial answer.

The town of Oberursel has decided that when naming any new streets priority will be given to “bekannte Frauenpersönlichkeiten” – famous women – who are connected with the town. There appears to be a lack of such street names at present, and streets that have been named after famous women in the past have not necessarily had a local connection.

So now I know that she is someone connected to Oberursel, but that is all I know.

That is why I decided to contact the town hall (Rathaus) and ask. The receptionist told me that this was not the first request for this information, and that she had read it somewhere. But she could not find the answer in her documents.

She passed me on to the department for town development (Stadtentwicklung) who were also not able to answer the question. They did, however, know someone who would be able to tell me and I now have their telephone number.

But they were not available this afternoon. I will try and contact them another day, but maybe someone reading this can tell me instead?

Who was Lina Himmelhuber?