Heller und Pfennig

Ich bin gerade dabei, mir das Handbuch für das Einkommenssteuerprogramm durchzulesen, das ich mir gekauft habe. Dabei stoße ich ab und zu auf Formulierungen wie etwas auf Heller und Cent genau ausrechnen, und das stößt mir irgendwie auf -- die feststehende Redewendung ist ja auf Heller und Pfennig.

Zwar stimmt es, dass es keine Pfennige mehr im Umlauf gibt -- aber der Heller ist vor noch viel längerer Zeit obsolet geworden. Das hat die Deutschen auch nicht davon abgehalten, die alte Redewendung weiter zu benutzen. Ich finde also, dass man auch weiterhin auf Heller und Pfennig sagen sollte; dann sind eben beide Münzen alt und nicht nur eine.

Buy one, get a discount

We went shopping for Christmas presents today, and Stella also wanted to get a good warm scarf or a hood or something.

She had seen some interesting scarf-cum-hoods at a booth at the Christmas market, so we went there. They were €15 for one or €15 for two.

While we were standing there looking at them, another couple came along and also started looking at them. I suggested, jokingly, that they could buy one together with us and get it more cheaply that way.

At first, the woman misunderstood me and suggested we exchange addresses and then she could wear the hood in the winter and bring it over to Stella to wear for the summer :) But then she understood that she meant buy two hoods together in order to take advantage of the discount.

After a while she agreed and said, "Yes, let's really do that."

Then, her partner said said he'd also take one and the lady at the booth said that if we bought three, then each would be only €12. So Stella got €0.50 back from the €12.50 she had already paid, and the couple paid €24 for both of theirs. So they only saved €1 but we saved €3 :D

We also bought a nutcracker there as a present -- we had seen a similar one elsewhere that we had considered getting them as it seemed more solid, but the model at the scarf booth was cheaper. So we saved there as well!

New HVV timetable

Bought the new HVV (local public transport organisation) timetable -- wow, what a big tome! (In German I'd have called it a "Wälzer".)

It's A4 sized now and only slightly thinner than before when it was about 1/3 of A4 size. I suppose the expansion into southern Schleswig-Holstein and the resulting increase in number of bus lines made that difference.

Also, the map is now no longer a folding map that comes with every other timetable but is instead a set of pages at the back, similar to maps you sometimes see in the Yellow Pages or something.

I find that not so good. You can't see the whole thing at once, for one thing.

Also, the map isn't very comprehensive. It's in three sections, with successively larger scales: central Hamburg, greater Hamburg, and the entire area.

However, the central Hamburg and greater Hamburg sections appear to be limited to the information that used to be on both sides of the previous map. Specifically, new bus lines that aren't part of the old numbering scheme aren't shown on it at all (for example, busses in Elmshorn and Tornesch, or the 900 express bus from Ratzeburg and Mölln to Wandsbek-Markt), and bits around the eastern and southern border are cut off.

And on the largest-scale map, there are only relatively few HVV busses marked -- Hamburg itself is not depicted, except for the outskirts (so there's a kind of "hole" in the middle of the area covered by the largest-scale map pages), and in the bits served by HVV busses, only the "Metrobus" lines are marked. So even though the medium-scale maps say "continued on page X", the "normal" bus lines aren't actually continued. Bummer.

Oh, and the grid lines still have the numbering system introduced a couple of maps ago, with numbers on both the X and Y axes, which I consider error-prone. Before that, it was letters along the X axis and numbers along the Y axis, which gave coordinates such as "Q16", which I think looks nicer than the "16/21" they have now.

Girls

On the way home, while Stella and I were walking up the little hill to our flat, a girl who seems to live in our housing complex and whom I sometimes see on the bus in the morning (and whom I think kind of cute) was walking down the hill. She smiled at me and said "Hi", which I thought was nice :) So I said "hi" back.

That is all.