Customer threatening purchase...

FWWSSHHHHHH!!! FFFHHHHHH THTHTHHH! WHEEEEEE... click.

Once, on a very bad day, my sister (http://ruthless.zathras.de) uttered the words "The only thing you can do in Heidelberg on a weekend, is drive to Mannheim". She denies ever having held that opinion. And today, I came close to the realization, that just maybe she really hasn't said that yet. Maybe the sound was carried to me from the future, through some sort of temporal and spacial anomaly, or whatever (astrophysics is more Ruth's forte, my apologies if this is complete nonsense). Why I come to that conclusion? This is why:

Today, I decided to buy the Stargate first season boxed DVD set (did you hear Ruth exhaling in relief? That's because I'm planning to get the DS9 set one day, and she claimed aliens must've taken over my body). Anyway, the SG-1 box has been out for a while, and has been listed on Amazon for a while. But since many stores are losing revenue, I thought I'd go into town for a walk, send off my broken iBook power supply, drop by the pharmacy and get the box there, with the side effect that I'd be able to start watching it tonight, instead having to wait for it to hit my mailbox tomorrow.

I went to Kaufhof, which is sort of a small shopping mall, and one of the two stores that carry DVDs that succeeded in getting all specialized video stores to close. I looked around, but the only thing I found was an old Star Trek boxed set with a note "contents available at the counter". After a while, I found the "zeroeth" box of the boxed set, which contains the pilot of the Stargate show and the movie. Well, if they have that, the box has to be somewhere... so I tried to locate store personnel to ask them. I found three counters, but no personnel... :-(

Well, if they don't want my money, I can not give it to them quite happily. No problem there. So I went out the store -- and stopped. What other store that carries videos and DVDs is there? The two Videotheques I remembered only do rental. Then I remembered: Yeah, ProMarkt has DVDs and CDs ... maybe I'll find something there. Okay, ProMarkt has now renamed themselves into "MakroMarkt" to be more easily confused with their competitor "MediaMarkt", but the store was still there.

I went to the designated DVD area and found ... ummm ... mostly empty shelves. They were having a huge sell-out of DVDs and CDs (mostly Polka played by Andre Rieu, and "deals" on movies nobody wants anyway ... the best they had was one of the "Alien Nation" TV movies, which is nice, but not good enough to pay 30 bucks for, especially since it's still on TV every year). If you ask me, I don't think the shop's gonna make it much longer ...

Well, at least we still have lots of "Boutiques" where I can buy colorful scarfs to ... um ... clean my windows with? Okay, we have three tea shops, and lots of bars that demand horrendous prices because they know tourists will pay that ... ummm ... where's the upside to this???

Well, Ruth, if you happen to be reading this: You were/will be/whatever right. I already have to go to Mannheim to get my US comics because "Cocktail Comic" can't even fulfill orders by decade-long customers made three months in advance. Now I'll have to drive to Mannheim to get a DVD. I can't wait to drive over there to get my mail...

click. FWSHHHHHHHHHH!!! THTHTHTHHHHHHHHH WHEEEEEEEeeeeeeee....