Alexander Graham Bell

After yesterday's excitement it was time to get down to earth and attempt to install the new dishwasher. There are wonderful looking sketched plans with arrows and numbers and all manner of ☑ and ☒, loads of liitle plastic packets with various screws and weird bits and lots more besides.Not a written word and certainly not a warning notice for people like me who like to think they can, know they can't but need to prove a point.

Very luckily there is nowadays the proverbial "Google" and the likes of YouTube. I tend to think of these little helpers after I have messed something up but today I was prepared. I knew what to do with three cables - electric plug, water and waste pipes. The difficulty was how to fit the decor front from the old machine. Luckily found an excellent DIY video that explained it fully.

And so set to work and as they say in these parts "Nur ned hudla!" - " Take it easy". And it worked but did take up a few hours getting the lines on the dishwasher to line up with the existing kitchen cupboards.

So thanks to Alexander Graham Bell who appeared on this planet 170 years ago, I was able to enjoy the evening dog walk and passed the bit of modern technology that makes it all possible - the telephone line from our house to the telegraph mast in the village - 550 meters (600 yards) across fields and under streams. I wonder if anyone has a map that shows it's exact location and am amazed it has never been damaged by farmers.

The photo shows the connection box installed by "POST" i.e. German Postal Service, "Deutsche Bundespost" which was privatised in 1994 and nowadays simply known as Telekom. I suspect the box is from the mid 1970's. When we moved here in 2002, we had an internet speed of 0.3MBit/s and an expensive ISDN phone connection from Telekom. They were not even prepared to allow us to change provider to a cheaper service. However a few years ago, the parish council signed a deal with a small company who had a system capable of boosting the ancient copper cables up to a theoretical 50 MBit/s. Even more expensive than Telekom but a great improvement and we opted for the 10 MBit/s offer and took into account the less flexible land line phone offers.

BUT today in the post two envelopes - one from Telekom asking if we wanted free connection to a new Fibre-optic cable network being laid in the village and the second from the parish council asking that we attend a meeting in the "Town Hall" to explain the plan.

As part of the EU, German and Bavarian Government's push to bring digitalisation to us folk, there is lots of subsidy money available to local councils and they are very keen for us to take up the offer. Apparently the connection, especially for the dozen or so outlying houses in the parish, really is free, right up to a box installed within the house. Angie phoned the council and they said it was true and the plan was to lay a cable alongside the road - about 700m (750 yards) and we would then have a 200 MBit/s connection.

Almost sounds to good to be true. We shall see what next weeks meeting brings.