This is a familiar sight to all city dwellers here-- a yellow German Post office (Deutsche Post) bicycle. The outrigger front wheels drop down and retract like a kickstand to keep the bike upright whenever the postal worker is on a delivery. In all my time here, I don't ever recall seeing mail carriers delivering in trucks-- that owes a lot to the way the cities are laid out, how busy traffic can get and just how lousy the parking situation is.Duetsche Post is not the only game in town however. I often see the red bikes of NordbayernPost (North Bavaria Post) plying the streets. Unlike the USA, as of 2008 mail delivery in Germany is not a government monopoly, and NordbayernPost is one of the many small--and not so small-- private companies looking to make waves. Deutsche Post is also notable in that they own the DHL shipping and freight company, and a lot of their branches have a bank inside (the Deutsche Post-owned Postbank). I sort of like the bank idea-- it's convenient as all get-out, and that's 2 places where standing in line is a common occurrence (post offices and banks).
2 comments:
Do y'all have CityMail, too? They have red bikes running around our town, competing with the Deutsche Post as well.
Cliff: No CityMail, though it's possible that NordBayernPost may be a local franchise of that company. The only other private post I know of here is (theoretically) TNT which rules the private postal roost in the Netherlands and elsewhere, but I've never seen them actually deliver any residential mail here even though they are approved to do so. Thanks for reading!
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