Today the Monday Podcast talks about a new type of fuel – bio-ethanol. Graham has been driving a bio-ethanol car for the last week and comments on how the car is running and how new fuels help the environment.
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e85.biz
Ford Bioethanol
Here is another example of a translation into German that appears to have gone slightly wrong:
What it wants to do is to ask you politely not to park in front of the entrance, but it should read “Bitte vor diesem Eingang nicht parkieren”.
Or should it?
“Parkieren” sounds funny to the native German – but why? Is it because it appears to be wrong, or even because it appears to be an attempt to translate “to park” into German (as in “to walk” being “spazieren“?)
Actually, in this case, the translation is technically correct – in Swiss German the verb would be “parkieren”. The sign was seen on the entrace to a complex on Lanzarote – perhaps they have a lot of Swiss park in front of the gate?
As yet I haven’t had to fill up the bio-ethanol car – it came with a full tank! But I have been looking at where to go when I do need to.
My dealer in Bad Homburg will probably be my usual port of call – the petrol pump is key-operated so I can go there anytime and get sent a monthly bill which should be very convenient.
But looking further afield, the site e85.biz has a downloadable directory of bio-ethanol petrol stations.
The list currently has 91 entries for Germany – I’ve already downloaded it to my Palm to be able to take it with me – the first thing I noticed was that there are lots of independent petrol stations or smaller chaines – the larger ones are conspicuous by their absence.
If a large car manufacturer like Ford can make the cars to run on bio-ethanol, surely the major petroleum chains can put it on their forecourts?
And unless I’m very much mistaken, none of the ones on the list are located on a motorway that I use regularly.
So what do I plan to do? Well, fill up before I go for one thing, and maybe put enough normal petrol into get home again. If I’m staying somewhere then I will find out where the nearest bio-ethanol petrol station is and go there if it’s not too much of a detour, but at the moment I don’t think I’d leave the motorway to find one situated in an area that I’m not familiar with.
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