It is strange to see films and TV shows in which people without masks shop, crouch close together, go to the cinema or even hug and kiss in greeting. After months of the pandemic, dreams and memories that breathe freely, while the virus is now trying to grab our breath, tens of millions of national coaches have become tens of millions of epidemiologists and we only buy non-essential things by phone or online, seem strange that we also like to use. The memory of a day in late August is also strange 2019. The last maskless summer – also meteorologically diametrically opposed to Christmas time 2020, since we are in dark mode. Also, I have not yet been permanently transferred to the Bremen home office, where I have been experiencing a strange time like everyone else since mid-March.

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A country trip with digressions, small-scale travel, the center of the world and spontaneous inventiveness: About complex systems, small causes with big effects and complicated questions that usually have no simple answers. A four-part (not only) for Christmas on heise online.

(I .): The Purist (24. 12.) (II.): Helmut on the cooling mat (25. 12.) (III.): The last Count of Hoya (26. 12) (IV.): Perrow’s normal disasters (27. 12.) It may have been a flight of sparks, triggered by a freight train with a defective brake that hit the embankment along the Hanover – Bremen i n set fire. At the time I was sitting on the train on the way home from my workplace in the heise online newsroom. It was an Intercity 2 train that Deutsche Bahn has been using since the end of 2015 , first of all stops on the Norddeich-Mole – Leipzig and Bremen route. It is a double-decker train that was probably first used on this route, because local transport tickets are valid from Bremen on the IC to the north and therefore arrive at the platform in Bremen main station shortly before 18 watch many people who want to commute back to the surrounding area after work or shopping. They can probably be served better with the new train, because the seats are less generously distributed in it, so more people fit in.

Get off everything The Intercity 2 replaced the old one-story train, which only had a few sockets per car had, but a much better seating comfort. The inclination of the seats of the IC2 cannot be adjusted to a comfortable position as in the previous model; instead, passengers can only change the height of the headrest and the position of the seat. That doesn’t change the angle of inclination of the backrest much. A worsening improvement that I soon afterwards in an editoral for the c’t 20 / 2016 themed. One reader saw his religious feelings hurt by the text and canceled his c’t subscription. At least that’s what he wrote to me in an e-mail.

The IC came to Nienburg on this late Tuesday afternoon in late August, as always, and did not continue from there after a short stop as it usually does. The announcement said that the journey would be postponed indefinitely due to an embankment fire. The fire brigade is on the way.

Embankment fires are in the ranking list of operational disruptions of Deutsche Bahn, which lead to “stop failures” 13. Position, that is, far behind train disturbances that top the list. From … to 2018 registered the Deutsche Bahn between 364 and 468 such fires per year that occur in hot, dry summers such as especially in the years 2018 and 2018 mainly from sparks, but also from thrown away burning cigarettes. The cause can also be broken glass, which act like a burning glass in the blazing sun and ignite the vegetation along the tracks. The fire can spread to bushes and trees in the area, no train should pass through the inferno.

This Tuesday afternoon in late August 2019 nothing more went from Nienburg. Since I had been commuting on the route for eleven years, I had already heard the conductor’s announcement in a few summers that the train could not continue because of a fire on the embankment. Each time he didn’t say how long the stop would be, how could he. There was only one IC2 in Nienburg, so no other train in front of it had been stopped by the fire, which had only recently been blazing or had been discovered. Shortly afterwards, an announcement instructed the passengers to get off, because the train should return to Hanover to make way for the next ICE. I took out my iPhone to explore the traffic connections between Nienburg and Bremen. The phone also told me that the battery was still 5 percent charged.

I had the first Apple smartphone as a commuter 2007 especially for this purpose: So that I can conveniently and thoroughly inform myself in the morning and after work whether the train is on time, and how in a case like this the alternatives look like. Over time, I was able to quench my curiosity on social media as to why the train I was on just wouldn’t move on when the loudspeakers stayed silent.

Under some circumstances train attendants can be humorous and talkative, for example at Carnival time when the train approaches Düsseldorf and the announcer clearly shows that it is from Cologne originates. In May 2020 a train attendant announced the following: “And finally, a note to all conspiracy theorists here On board: Please remember that the federal government is secretly collecting saliva samples to produce clones of you to replace, so wear your mouth and nose covering at all times to prevent the government from getting your DNA Thank you, also on behalf of all fellow travelers! ”

The Internet in the palm of your hand The predecessor of my iPhone was a Philips Xenium 9 @ 9 ++, which 2003 had come onto the market and, unlike its predecessor, had the antenna integrated in the housing. It could bring the Internet to the palm of my hand with GPRS and WAP. This also made it possible to check train connections, but that was tedious, cumbersome and expensive. I opted for the Xenium because Philips had dispensed with all of the newfangled gadgets such as color display, MMS and camera and therefore seven and a half hours of chat and hours of standby. With the iPhone, I’d hopped a big leap forward on the mobile internet, but an equally big step back in battery life. A Xenium didn’t offer too many functions, for example to pass the time in the waiting room, an iPhone all the more diverse. It was not without reason that the Philips device was described by reviewers as a mobile phone for purists.

After switching from the Xenium to the iPhone, I imposed a rigid charging regime on myself so that the device was really ready, when I urgently need it in an emergency. I meticulously made sure that the smartphone was connected to the electricity every evening and also at work in Hanover so that it was nice and juicy on the go. If, for whatever reason, I had forgotten to charge, the power bank that I bought as a reserve canister could help out. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to load it after I had used it extensively a few days earlier on my camping holiday on the Baltic Sea.

The iPhone was just able to tell me that there was no direct bus connection between Nienburg and Bremen there. I could drive from Nienburg to Hoya, from Hoya to Hassel, from there to Verden and finally to Bremen – then the battery was empty. A rail replacement service was not available, all passengers were dependent on using the conventional line service and crowded at the bus stops. Many phones were pulled out to reschedule appointments or just to let them know that someone was late for dinner.

I was in no hurry and let people get on the bus to Hoya, in the first, on the next buses that came until I was the only one left. The iPhone stopped making a sound. I got on the bus and asked the driver whether the three-change connections, as I still had in mind, were workable. “Yes,” he said, “get in.”

Noticeable rustling “It’s Brokser Marriage Market, all drivers are busy. That’s why there is no rail replacement service,” said the bus driver to me, the only passenger. I sat down next to him at the front and he introduced himself as Helmut. I was only vaguely familiar with the folk festival in nearby Bruchhausen-Vilsen, although it has a similar status for the area as the Freimarkt for Bremen or the Kramermarkt for Oldenburg. I knew from immigrants from the Stoppelmarkt in Vechta that it offered them many opportunities for dancing and dolling and for days off in the fizzy drink.

The Broks marriage market lasts five days and always ends on the last Tuesday in August. The Morning pint for visitors , Contest, fairground rides, trade exhibition, bachelor auction and 2019 the appearance of Victoria, the Helene- Fischer Double No. 1. I didn’t know any of that when I was on the bus and not as usual on the train, in which many displays light up their seats.

In the initial phase of my commuting, ICE picked up at a quarter past seven in the morning many took their Weser courier out of their pockets if they weren’t sleeping a little longer. Today it can be heard very clearly when someone is rustling the newspaper. In the old IC in Hanover, a man in work clothes would often greet me in the afternoons, sit down next to me and take the rake at hand. With the change to IC2, the commuters sorted themselves again, I haven’t seen this unknown friend since then. Whether he still appreciates paper news from the Nienburg district and takes out the bread from his lunch box that he actually made for his lunch break that morning?

(anw)