Novocastrian

OK. Auf wiedersehen.

dmu

I'm with Novo here, if you're living in the UK and don't like the way Lidl is organised at the tills, then simply shop elsewhere!
If you are considering moving to Germany, there are more important factors to take into account than Lidl till procedures....
For what it's worth, Lidls in France are set out in the manner which you prefer.

aries

I suggest you use supermarkets which provide the service you want.

In Germany I generally use Edeka supermarkets and have never experienced a problem.

Here is an amusing link to Christmas music created by Edeka checkouts.
http://www.edeka.de/unterhaltung/web...campaign=ks_yt
So who said Germans don't have a sense of humour?

scot47

I have forwarded this complaint to the competent organs in Berlin. The OP should expect a visit shortly from officials who will deal with him.

Moses2013

Trains: Usually on strike but otherwise good.
Buses: Regional good. Long distance bus services limited, but now becoming more popular since the Bahn strikes.
Are Germans having their weekly grocery shopping delivered like a lot of people in the UK?
Simple answer: Depends, Eismann & Bofrost have always delivered.
Do they use eBay & Amazon? Yes.
Do they have a good Public TV service or subscribe to pay TV (like Sky) and phone/internet packages. Personal taste and shows with Jauch & Gottschalk better than anything else.
Internet in general quite good with growing fibre optic offerings.
Do they drink tap water - Most don't. The water quality isn't great everywhere.
Do they buy designer coffee on their way to work each day? Yes, just like anywhere else. Actually 68% regularly buy coffee to go.

Assanah

You make it sound like Germans are not drinking tap water because the water quality is bad. That's not true of course. You can drink tap water everywhere in Germany and water quality is good to very good.

Moses2013

I said:
Do they drink tap water - Most don't. The water quality isn't great everywhere.
I didn't say it's bad, but it isn't great everywhere.
Some parts of Germany have good water, but Germany isn't one city.

Belastetes Trinkwasser in Deutschland - Es stinkt zum Himmel - Gesundheit - Süddeutsche.de

fidobsa

I think Germans are generally more willing to be regimented than Brits. I also get a bit irritated by some of the rules in Lidl and Aldi. For example, they insist on you orienting your trolley a certain way at the checkout. If you do have shopping bags in the trolley they want to look inside them. I usually go to a few other shops before I get to Lidl so there is often stuff already in the bags but I've never been challenged about this so I guess the checkout staff are just going through the motions a lot of the time.

Karl180

It is obligatory to pack as you go through the check out and at ALDI and LIDL you have to be like grease lightning. My girlfriend packs her own basket in the trolley as it goes through the checkout. If its a few items she lifts the basket out shows the assistant they scan and away we go. Otherwise we empty the basket at the checkout show the assistant its empty and restock as they scan. Never had a problem with it really. Germans tend to try and avoid any meat that is not from a butchers! Would love to find a shop over here that did scotch eggs and pork pies! Or a pub that showed decent footy I think I moved back to the 80's in Hof! If anyone know any please point them out.

amideislas

Ya think? More "willing"?

More or less the icon of regimentation, really.

Novocastrian

I didn't find that to be true in the 8 years that I lived there.

YMMV I guess.

amideislas

Depends on where you live; Berlin and Köln would be likely exceptions.

Germany has amongst the most far-reaching set of civil regulations on the planet, some quite petty and serve no tangible purpose. It's quite regimented, and from a societal point of view, people tend to be equally so (and it's no secret).

That regimentation has both positive and negative consequences.

Park your car at a slight angle, and someone is likely to reprimand you for it, if not call the police. Kids bounce a ball during "quiet time", and it wouldn't be unheard of for the police to show up. Wash your car on a Sunday... Have a few friends over for socialising on your terrace after 22:00...

I've paid €40+ fines for these things - solely because some self-righteous, OTT regimented neighbour called the police. But that's Germany. Love it or leave it. I chose the latter.

And whilst you may argue I deserved it (it's against the law, after all), I'd argue you won't find that level of pettiness and regimentation in most of the rest of the world.

Luckily, Germany has made some progress in reducing the depth of senseless regulation in the past decade, and there are signs that Germans are becoming decreasingly regimented and petty.

Many will even engage in protests against (or even patent refusal to comply with) government-complicit scams like the GEZ, which is more or less unprecedented for Germans.

Lastly, most Germans living here in Spain don't exhibit much of the stereotypical "Cabeza Cuadrado" (the local pet name for Germans), and tend to be very uncharacteristically unregimented. When in Rome...

Assanah

Always depends on what you are looking and what is important to you. I always found the willingness of the British to be spied on by the government very disconcerting. I prefer the petty parking rules of Germany to the overwhelming government spy activities in the UK. Not without reasons have a lot of the Internet avantgarde who are fighting for freedom and against control and spying made Germany their home and not the UK or Spain.

Assanah

I don't know any German who doesn't drink tap water. Of course other than you I don't know all Germans.

amideislas

Have you ever been audited by the finanzamt?

As a previously long-time resident of Germany with direct experience in these matters, I can assure you that the finanzamt has direct and unfettered access to your Kontoauszug, your debit/credit card transactions, can easily determine where and when you shop, what you buy, how much you spend, where you work, how much they pay you, can access your telephone records, know who your friends are, where you go for holidays, what kind of car you drive, how much you paid for it, and anything and everything related to your Steuererklärung. All with a few strokes of a keyboard. It's just that easy, requires no due process, and it's all perfectly legal, which may explain why you don't see much in the press about it.

Don't be fooled. All governments, including those who scream the loudest about civil rights and privacy, can find out anything about you - especially the Germans.

But unlike many other countries, Germany is far less concerned with international threats than the activities of its domestic population. The finanzamt is the single most aggressive tax-collection agency on the planet, and will resort to anything, including international espionage and covert operations to collect as much tax as possible. They monitor your internet activity, they have (as a matter of public record) illegally paid foreign bank employees millions to copy and hand over account holder data, and have an entire cyber spy network to monitor the activities of German residents to ensure they live consistently within their Steuererklärung. This isn't a secret. Go to an audit. They'll have more information about you in that little folder than you could ever imagine. Ask Boris Becker what they did to him.

You might succumb to "warm and fuzzy" propaganda on state-run public television (which incidentally, you are forced to pay for, whether you watch it or not), but if you look just below the surface, you'll find that Germany is every bit as equally, if not more guilty than anyone else of domestic spying.

The notion that Germany doesn't engage in it is simply laughable. It's routine, and unlike other countries who have been "caught red handed", it's perfectly legal in Germany, nothing to be 'caught red handed' at.

So, if the main reason you love Germany is because they don't "spy" on you, then you really should wise up. They most certainly know more about you than the UK does.