Friday, October 13, 2006
From January 1st 2007 the current rules on shop opening / closing hours will
be relaxed considerably, meaning that shops and stores can more-or-less
choose their own opening times, at least from Monday to Saturday.
Sunday closing will remain the rule with the current system of four
city-wide Sundays (verkaufsoffene Sonntage)
with limited opening being permitted each year, although additionally
shops may open on a further two Sundays of their choice.
Although most shops now open until the currently permitted latest closing
time of 8pm, it looks like only the larger department stores and some
of the more central shopping centres / malls will extend their opening
hours, generally until 10pm.
For more information on general opening hours see our guide
"Shopping in Berlin"; and for shopping outside of
the usual opening hours see our page on "Out-of-hours shopping".
Thursday, September 28, 2006
A quick warning which may affect your shopping plans over the next few days:
Sunday October 1st is a verkaufsoffener Sonntag
in Berlin, which means
shops are allowed to open. Generally the shopping centers / malls and the
department stores will be open, as well as many of the shops in the main
shopping areas.
There's no silver lining without the matching cloud however:
Tuesday October 3rd is Tag der Einheit ("Unification Day"),
which is a public holiday, meaning all shops, banks etc.
will be closed. The only exceptions will be those with
special permission to open outside of the general rules: see ourguide to out of hours shopping
for details.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
If you've arrived here because you're wondering why BBC World has disappeared from
DVB-T in Berlin: see
this entry.
When I was little, back in a dim and distant place called the Seventies, television
was a comparatively simple affair. On the one my parents had
there was a dial which did duty both as the volume
control and as an on-off switch, and another dial for selecting the channel, much
like you do on a radio - so simple even a child someone
over thirty could understand how to work it. The thing with tuning in via a
dial might sound a little fiddly, but bear in mind there were just three channels and
a fair portion of the programming consisted of something called the "test signal",
so "zapping" was not really a thing you'd want or need to do.
Oh yes, the broadcasts were in colour but more often than not the TV set
was not.
Monday, August 7, 2006
If you're an EU citizen resident in Berlin for more than three months,
you'll probably have received a Wahlbenachrichtigung
(election notice) from your local Bezirksamt (borough office).
If not you've probably noticed the sudden plague of posters infesting
most lampposts bearing the grinning countenances of
pathological liars politicians and would-be politicians
and their meaningless slogans.
Yes - it's election time.
