Geir and the S-Bahn

Finally Geir has managed to update his website again with his usual hilarious style, although I don't know if many of you will be able to understand his bit in icelandic (I'm still looking for a translator, by the way).

He does bring up a serious point to attention, though. That is that the public transport system here in Mainz has turned (at least semi-) private !
You can now hear little adverts when you stop at particular stations (which should be interesting for the stop outside 'Das Crazy' - "for all your physical needs").

So I thought it was my job to investigate further.

Apparently, the Stadtwerke Mainz has recently teamed up with Entega (a water/gas/electricity company) to form a semi-privatised company.

Delving deeper into the layers of sketchy information and reasons for conglomorating (basically - money), I discovered a few interesting facts.

Firstly, there is nothing stopping us from putting up an advert for Kurmainz Kaserne (although I think Geir's proposal might not be permitted). So I have emailed the person in charge and should hopefully be hearing soon how much it will cost for our little 'announcement'.

Secondly, amongst all these money-making ideas comes a little gem which is - hiring out a party tram for a few hours. It can take up to 35 people and would cost about 15 DM each for 2 hours, but we can choose the route - and therefore go straight through the Hauptbahnhof drinking bottles of beer with our music on loud. Anyone interested give me a bell, I think it would be agreat way of finishing the year off !!!

Getting back to the subject of privatisation of the trams, do we know where it will stop?? Will we get on a tram one day to find that instead of seeing the cars go by we actually see whole walls of video screens full of adverts with music playing in the background. It might get so bad that you just have to get off at the next stop to avoid a headache (and that's where you'll find yourself inside the newly built shop-in-path-of-tram).

What if they started spraying a buying-gas into the carriages whilst you were travelling? You would get off and buy the first thing that you saw (which happens to be really expensive and you don't need it).

Thinking more into the future, what if people started hacking into these advert systems, you could end up seeing a porn-film on every wall and have sex-gas sprayed around (although that sounds like a quite good idea :)

Enough of thinking - my head has done too much for today. Update as soon as I get a reply.