Archives for 2012

Important travel information for Frankfurt am Main 16th – 20th May

Occupy camp at the EZB in Frankfurt, near Willy-Brandt-PlatzA large demonstration is taking place in Frankfurt am Main this weekend.  It is expected to last until the early hours of Sunday morning, and 30,000 demonstrators are expected.  Their aim is to shut down the banking area of Frankfurt and stop the employees there from getting to work.

Many shops in the area have been boarded up and some banks have made contingency plans for their employees to work from home.  Others have instructed their staff to avoid formal dress.

The biggest disruption is to the public transport network and anyone travelling to or through Frankfurt this weekend should be aware of the following changes to services:

  • S-Bahn trains are not stopping at “Taunusanlage”.  This affects lines S1 to S6, S8 and S9
  • U-Bahn trains are not stopping at “Willy-Brandt-Platz”.  This affects lines U1 to U5 and U8
  • Trams 11 and 12 will terminate at the Hauptbahnhof in the west of the city and “Börneplatz / Stoltzestraße” in the east.  There is no service through the city centre.
  • Bus route 64 will only operate between Ginnheim and Miquel-/Adickesallee.  There is no service to the Hauptbahnhof.
  • The night buses n1, n2 and n8 will be routed around the area.
  • The Ebbelwoi-Express will not be in Service between Wednesday and Saturday
  • The ticket offices at Hauptwache, Konstablerwache and Bornheim Mitte will be closed on Friday and Saturday

The latest travel news in German can be found on Twitter by following @vgf_ffm.  Follow us on @allthingsgerman for updates in English.

A sponsored walk to Oberstedten and back

The starting point for the sponsored walk near OberstedtenLast Sunday saw a flurry of activity in the woods between the northern end of Oberursel and nearby Oberstedten.  Several hundred children and parents from the local Waldorf school were holding a sponsored walk to raise money for a school  in South Africa.

Although the school itself borders on the area, the start was actually located some distance away in the woods itself – signs led those like myself who had gone to the school instead from the gates along a trail to get there.

Once at the check-in point, the walk itself took a circuit that was about 1 km long, with the walkers being sponsored on a per-lap basis.  Over 300 people were expected to take part.

The sponsorship money raised will be put to use in a project at the Dassenberg Waldorf School in South Africa who have had a partnership with the school in Oberursel for the past 15 years. [Read more…]

It’s cookie time again – are you ready?

Cookies shaped like Euro coins - ©iStockphoto.com/mix7777Do you remember how a year ago we were discussing the new EU cookie law (also known as directive 2009/136/EC)?  And how having realised that although the direction was now integrated into UK law, it was pretty impractical to implement?

Well then you may also remember that the Information Commissioner’s Office gave businesses a year to get their sites in order, before they started issuing fines.

That year runs out this month!

Just to re-cap: you need permission from your visitors to store a cookie on their computer unless it is absolutely necessary for the site to work.  So you might need to store a cookie to operate a shopping basket when someone buys something, but you don’t have to store a cookie to remember the name of your visitor just to make things more convenient for them.  You must ask first.

And tracking cookies are a big problem!

Yet although businesses in the UK have had all that time to sort out the problem, I sometimes get the impression that very little has been done and it is going to be a mad dash to get everything fixed on time.  Maybe I’m wrong and everyone has a solution that they are going to activate on 26th May? [Read more…]

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