The joys of life in Western Europe

Stop!, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Ik moet dit even kwijt:

I don't have so much to do otday, just a few things, but even this is not so easy.

I go to the Post Office. I have to take the bike through a sand pit because the road, still after a month is open, nothing having been achieved. The fountain project has been put back to February and the latest story is that is is the fault of the water company, not a case of bad planning by the project leader, at least this is what he tells us.

The bikes tyres are going flat, maybe through having ridden across all those sandpits.

The Post Ofice is closed. There is an electricity cut.

I go to the computer shop and they tell me that I have indeed lost all my e-mails and e-mail addresses as they had jut assumed that I used Windows and not Mozilla.

I go back to the Post Office to pick up a letter. The doors are still closed and there is a queue. Eventually I get served. The letter is from the Postbank and was brought to to be delivered when I was not at home, so finally, after a signature and an electrical scanning of my passport, I get to receive a letter asking for information which they had previously thanked me for sending them in good order.

I akl if they can track a foreign payment I made, but despite all the adverts for the Postbank and the fact that they do pay and take cash etc, they tell me they are a post office and, of course, they cannot help me with anything like this, (as if I should have known).

So I phone up the Postbank and after I have typed my account number (which they can now link to my telephone number) they tell me I have phoned the wrong number and have to phone a different one.

I do this, and the lady cannot find any evidence of any foreign payment made. Apparently, they had phoned me about the payment on the same day as the postman had tried to deliver me their letter, but I was not in. So, they sent me a letter to ask me to get in touch with them, but the postman never delivered this letter, so I was not to know that the payment had not been made.

So now I have to do the whole payment again and no doubt it'll arrive just after it needs to be where it is going.

At least it is not raining.