Tag: Karin Brenig

Managing our Trash – and my Parents’ too

Posted on by Karin Brenig

Moving back to Germany I anticipated a few obstacles and a little bit of “reverse culture shock”, but about important things – like work, housing, health insurance, politics – not about something as mundane as trash. I vaguely remembered, that Germans separate their trash – but I didn’t expect to see the system that far blown out of proportion!

The handling of trash has become a science. Housholds have to deal with it on an individual basis, the cities and communities may, or may not, offer full-service garbage collection. When you move into a new town, your first visit to their website should be for information about garbage, and how to handle it.

Where I live, I have to sort my trash into a dozen different categories

Bottles with refundable deposit

Recyclables
cardboard and paper
brown glass
green glass
white glass

Compostables
only plant based organic material

Packaging 
all packing materials that are not cardboard, paper, or glass

Waste
everything else, except toxic waste

Toxic
paint
chemicals, pills
light bulbs, electronics
batteries

Only 3 of these categories of trash will be picked up at my house by the municipal garbage removal service: compostables (my 80l green bin) and waste (my 120l black bin) on trash day in alternate weeks, and packaging (in about 3 big yellow plastic bags) once a month.

Everything else I need to haul around to find proper disposal locations, and times when they are open.  Refundable bottles have to be returned to the store, where they were bought. Paper, cardboard, and three colors of glass can be dumped at various locations all over town – but only Mondays through Saturdays between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. Anything that is too big for my black bin, or grass clippings and green waste that would be too much for my green bin, or anything from the toxic category, needs to go to a collection site within my county. Those are open on three or four days a week, usually for two hours in the afternoon. There may be a fee for dumping certain bulky items, or chemicals, or whatever they feel like charging for.
recycle center
Where my parents live, the rules are slightly different. Their packaging material will not be collected, so that needs to be dumped at those, always overflowing, dump sites around town. After a while you will find out, when they empty those out – and dump your stuff right afterwards, into empty containers at a semi-clean location.

Can somebody explain to me, how this system is ecologically and economically advantageous? I can’t see the benefit for the environment, if every household spends hours every week driving all over town to get rid of their trash, and maybe that of their parents too.

 

 

Posted in Opinions

COVID-19 Positive

Posted on by Karin Brenig

The world has been in a state of paralysis for over a year now. Our basic constitutional rights have been violated. We can’t move about, we can’t meet, many of us can’t work, we can’t shop, we can’t go out to eat or see a movie. We feel like we aren’t allowed to live – all because of one invisible enemy: a virus, which we have no medication for, and just recently developed viable vaccines against.

So I really understand why people are angry and protesting, or feeling depressed and helpless. I for myself decided, though, to not indulge in self-pity nor waste my energy on politics. In my experience most situations can also have positive side-effects – you just have to look closely.

For me the COVID-19 pandemic brought some remarkable improvements

my arm after a covid shot

  • I’ve been working from home, saving me about two hours on the daily commute
  • my husband and I are spending more time with each other, doing more things together, strengthening our bond
  • I prepare our meals at home, which promotes mindful eating habits and helps keeping my weight under control
  • I’m at my residence most of the time to take deliveries, manage remodelling projects, and turn this house into a beautiful home
  • my self-confidence received a boost, because I realized that  – despite the global chaos and nonsensical politics – I have a pretty good grip on my personal life
  • once I am fully vaccinated, I’ll be allowed to regain some of my rights – and I will once again treasure the things I used to take for granted before the pandemic.
Posted in Opinions

Old Dog doesn’t need New Tricks

Posted on by Karin Brenig

Karin working in IT in the 80s

When I started working in IT, back in 1978, nobody really knew, how this “EDP” thing was supposed to work. Anybody without fear of breaking stuff was more than welcome to try their hand at it. We were explorers.

I punched little holes in cards, I fed those cards into the cardreader, I threaded magnetic tape into vacuum channels, I started programs on the master terminal console, I put tractor paper in the printer, I carried heavy disk drives around, I debugged code on a mainframe… all that without ever really receiving any formal training. We were hunters and gatherers.

Over the years the field evolved. People actually got trained, had job titles, passed tests and had to show certificates, or diplomas, to prove their worth for employers. I was really glad, that I didn’t have to go through this, because I was already “in”. We were mainstream.

As technology trickled down from the scientific top level, through big corporations, into family businesses, and finally everybody’s homes, new skills were needed faster; more people had to learn, and re-learn, how to do anything related to IT. Mainframes, client/server, PC’s – it became increasingly hard to stay abreast of all the new ideas, tools, and objects in our jobs – and lives. We were clutter.

When you realize, that you can’t know it “all” – because there’s just too much of it – you focus on the one area that looks most promising for the future. So many interesting topics, so many newly emerging technologies, shiny objects all around me – but will I pick the right one? Client/server, maybe? What if companies don’t use this, or that, or the other, anymore five years from now? The circumstances picked a niche for me, and many others. We were specialists.

The bigger the company you work for, the more complex their processes are, the harder it becomes to innovate. Especially big, old IT systems are increasingly hard to replace. Stuff that runs at the core of your organization – built over decades – can’t be replaced every time a new, better, faster, cheaper way of doing things emerges. It’s like trying to change a flat tire while the car is in motion. That’s where we are now with mainframe IT. Systems that we developed since the early 1980’s are still being used daily by big companies. The specialists, who developed those systems are at (or beyond) retirement age. We are undertakers.

Twenty years ago I worried about my skillset becoming “outdated” – and myself becoming “unemployable” – if I didn’t keep up with the ever changing world of IT. Today I’m baffled and flattered by the amount of serious job offers I (old dog with old tricks up her sleeve) get. My “antique” skillset is apparently highly sought after. We will be the last resort.

Posted in 05 - Getting Settled

The first Night in our new House

Posted on by Karin Brenig

view down my stairsIt took longer than we had planned. There were obstacles that we hadn’t anticipated. The Covid-19 pandemic, for one, and all the restrictions that came with it, made it next to impossible to go house-shopping. Persistence paid off, though.

This was only the second house we had looked at since moving to Germany in September last year. It offered everything that we wanted: plenty of space, close enough to where my parents live, not too close to the big city, but still within reach of it.

The owners, a young couple with two small children, were planning a third child – and wanted a house which would better meet their needs. I understand the reasoning – our house has plenty of space, divided into large open areas, with only three bedrooms. The master bedroom is reasonably sized, but the two children’s rooms (now our guest room and office) are just 97 and 130 square feet, respectively.

Now, I thought there would have been ways to modify the setup to accomodate a third child, but of course I didn’t share my ideas. Especially after I realized that the wife was reluctant to sell. She must have loved the place and grown attached to it over the roughly six years that the family lived there.

Today was the first night we spent in our own house. There is a lot of empty space to fill between the partially finished basement and the third floor. We have no furniture, no refrigerator, no washer or dryer. We slept in our bedroom right under the roof, on air mattresses. Breakfast the next morning – champagne and smoked salmon – came out of our electric camping cooler.

Life is good!

Posted in 05 - Getting Settled