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Sorry to hear of the economic status there. As the U.S. economy seems to be showing signs of recovery, I would hope that current German conditions are simply lagging the U.S. situation and things there will show improvement soon.

I, too, would find/found reading in German definitely taxing. That being said, I applaud Daffodil and others who are actively pursuing language courses.

Thanks for checking in with the group and keeping us up to date while you're in Germany!

I used to look at the Quelle catalogues and even had one sent to my home when I lived in Florida. I wonder if the karstadt stores will eventually close. I hope the Thomas Cook folks won't ever stop publishing their railway timetables!

When I lived here in the seventies Quelle was in every household. It is a shame that such an institution has fallen by the wayside. The day I arrived here my relatives had a package delivered. It was a coffee maker purchased from Amazon.de. That pretty much sums up what happened. The world has changed and Quelle was too slow off the mark.

Now that is a shocker! I too remember Quelle very well. Next you will be telling me that Beate Uhse is no more!

Yes, it is bad for the people: about 7.000 are layed off in the region of Nürnberg / Fürth. Even here in the Black Forest, where the catalogue was printed, people are layed off.
Today new goverment was established call black-yellow due to the party colours, but no one knows when recovery will come.

By the way there is a second big reseller: Otto - Versand

That is so sad hearing tha,t all of those people lost their jobs and those stores so well known to everyone falling by the wayside. We hear on the news in the U.S. that the economy is making a turnaround, but when I go to look for jobs online, I'm lucky to find a page or two of them and most of those are for nurses, engineers which I and many others are just not qualified for. Employers are still laying off, if people are not buying, no profits, if they lay people off then they have made money for the year. It's good for them, but not good for the people who have lost their jobs. I heard the economy is not supposed to turn around until the year 2012, by that time more people will have lost jobs, lost their homes and more businesses and stores will have closed. Even our local Starbucks closed, not that I went there alot, but it's just the fact that people who worked them lost their jobs, that's what bothers me.

Deep discounting caused Quelle's on line shopping to crash last week. There were vidoes on the news of people literally storming the stores looking bargains. Reminded me of Black Friday. I have yet to talk to anyone here who is pleased with the sale of Opel to Magna international and Russian financiers. The government insists it is to save jobs but many remain unconvinced and see it as a transfer of high technology to the Russians. Opel here seems to be a going concern. Unlike stateside they are producing cars that people actually want to buy and buy them they do. The drive here from Frankfurt airport was in a new Opel diesel of course at a white knuckle 200 kmph and I must admit I was really impressed with the quality and options the car had.