If you don't get a Christmas card from me this year, this is why...
Never mind e-mail. If there’s one thing that presents a danger to traditional forms of communication—namely letters and cards—it’s the German postal system, the yellow peril. Deutsche Post is everything that is wrong with Germany, combined in one bulging mail sack—from poor service and unfriendly staff at the counters, to the sort of bureaucracy that is so astoundingly complex that you can but laugh. That is, if you haven’t already been driven to tears… It’s bad at the best of times, and each of us has our own personal anecdotes of horror. But, come Christmas, the German postal nightmare has to rank as one of the greatest stress factors of the festive season, right up there with moody in-laws, drunken uncles and the rest of them. For whereas in most countries the task of sending a few dozen Christmas cards would entail buying a couple of books of standard stamps, sticking them on the envelopes and throwing the lot in the mailbox, this is far too simple for such a progressive state as Germany. Instead they’ve come up with the marvellous idea of drawing up a 98-page yellow booklet, detailing all the various postage options, depending on how square your Christmas cards happen to be. And should you be someone who prefers to buy charity packs with a variety of shapes and sizes, you’re in for a real treat! The first challenge is to find the information you require. You may think the A to Z index would be a good starting point. The only problem is, however, that Deutsche Post seems to have developed its own language. So it’s all very well knowing that information about “Bestsellermail” is on page 44, but to find out whether this is relevant to you, you’re going to have to turn to page 44 and read it first. And the same goes for most of the other 97 pages. Still with me? Let’s assume then that you want to send a simple Christmas card to England and need to know how much it’s going to cost. You scan the A to Z index. Ah. Problem. Should you turn to the section on “Kilo tarifs for international letters,” or would you be better looking under “stamps”? Or perhaps the section entitled “European Union,” or maybe “Express International”? Perhaps the answer is to be found under “Compact letters” or even “European countries.” Or should you just look under “Airmail”? I could go on. But let’s cut to the chase, and check out page 12. First of all you need to know whether your card is classed as standard, compact, large or maxi. A standard letter, for example, measures a minimum of 140 mm by 90 mm, and a maximum of 235 mm by 125 mm by 5 mm, but only where the length is at least 1.41 times the width, and the weight no more than 20 g. When it comes to the maxi letter, they introduce yet another method of calculating the size, by saying that the length, width and depth of the envelope must add up to no more than 900 mm, and that no individual side should be longer than 600 mm. And that’s just skimming the surface. God knows what they’d do if you turned up with a round envelope. So not only do you need the yellow guide book, you also need a ruler, calculator and a degree in math to stand a chance of choosing the right stamp—which all begs the question, is the counter staff actually up to such arithmetic? I mean they don’t come across as being the sharpest tools in the shed. Yet, we are at their mercy as to whether we pay 55 cents to send a birthday card, which itself cost just € 1.50, or whether they’ll bleed a whole € 1.80 out of us. Even the most trusting of us could be forgiven for questioning their consistency. Are they telling the truth, or are they adding on a few extra millimeters and pocketing the extra euro that it appears to cost? Indeed I’ve known letters be returned because the postage was too low, even though I had a receipt proving I’d paid the correct amount in the post office. They’d just stuck the wrong stamp on! And don’t think of questioning them—they’ll just brandish that plastic tool, you know, the one that looks like a complex set square, wave your letter against it so quickly you can’t possibly see anything and mutter “So ist es.” One of these days I’m going to lunge over the counter, grab the mystery measurer and make a run for it so that I can work it out myself, at home. In fact I’ve often wondered why Deutsche Post doesn’t sell the things. They’d make a stash! Imagine—no more yellow books and, more to the point, no more standing in unbearably slow-moving post-office lines, only to be insulted by rude staff at the end of them. If anyone knows where I can get my hands on one, answers on a postcard, 150 mm by 100 mm by 1 mm, stamp on the top right-hand corner, 3.75 mm from each edge…