German vice chancellor reduces shower time ‘again’

Im from east Germany bro. no one i know is pro putin.

German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck says he has had to once again “drastically reduce” the time he spends in the shower in an effort to cope with what he describes as an acute energy crisis.

Not heating apartments in winter would also greatly help Germany to overcome the difficulties allegedly caused by Russia, the minister told Der Spiegel magazine in an interview published on Friday.

When asked about his personal contribution to the nationwide effort to save as much gas as possible ahead of the “hard time” Germany faces in winter, Habeck said he was sticking to his own ministry’s recommendations. “I have once again drastically reduced my shower time,” he answered.

The minister apparently takes pride in his ability to have a “quick shower,” as he told Der Spiegel that he just “had to laugh” when his “Dutch colleague” told him about a planned campaign to encourage people to reduce the average shower time from 10 to five minutes. “I’ve never showered for five minutes in my life,” Habeck said, claiming he completes the task faster

[link to www.rt.com (secure)]

I am.

That is all it takes?
5 min showers and everything thing is fixed?

Genius! Who would have thought. Give this guy the Nobel peace prize! He has solved the problems they themselves have created!

Damn, it is time to party people..

Meanwhile, it’s summer in OP’s glorious Russian motherland.

Russia: Summer means cold showers

Every summer, Russian households have to do without hot water. For up to three weeks, everyone has to take cold showers — even in the ultramodern city of Moscow, writes DW's Yuri Rescheto.

"Modernization has reached new heights in Russia: You can now access the schedule for your building's hot-water shutdown online!" joke Muscovites. Meanwhile, they're busy putting pots on the stove and preparing to heat their water.

Every summer, for between 10 days and three weeks, there is no hot water in Russia. It makes no difference whether you live in the remotest corner of Khanty-Mansiysk or in the heart of the glittering metropolis of Moscow: This is the normal, 21st-century Russian reality. Only Westerners are surprised by it. Russians bear it with fortitude. They know it has to be this way. But ... why?

It all has to do with Russian central heating, a relic from the Soviet era that still operates in all the cities of the former USSR. This is a complex system of pipes several kilometers (miles) long, connected to hydroelectric power plants around each city that provide residential buildings with hot water. The water companies say that, in order to ensure that the system will operate reliably in winter, it must be maintained during the summer, and that it's only by doing this maintenance work that they can detect all the cracks in the pipes. The water temperature in the pipes is lowered to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), and the pressure in them is increased. Leaks are located and repaired, then checked again.

[link to www.dw.com (secure)]

When I liv d in Spandau, hot water was billed separately. There were hot water meters on all the taps.

Wow. Guess fill up the tub with cold water and put cold water on the stove to boil and add that in.

It's the gallons per minute that count, not the length or time of a shower.

I take drizzle showers all the time in the winter. Try it. I set the water to a nice hot drizzle, just enough to get all wet and be able to wash and clean. It saves a large amount of hot water in winter then my shower can last much longer. If I do a full water pressure shower I only have about 5 minutes before the hot water tank is empty.

And how much energy do you pay for in gas or electricity to do that, genius?

It takes less electricity to heat water in a stove than to use the water heater. Look it up.

More


Moscow authorities have switched off the hot water for annual repairs to the Soviet-era pipeline system, forcing millions of Muscovites to shiver through cold showers, shower at a friend’s house -- or not shower at all.

“Traditionally, the hot water is shut off for 21 days but in some parts of the capital the disconnection will be much shorter,” the Moscow United Energy Company (MOEK) said on its Web site.

MOEK controls the centralized municipal system that pumps hot water around Moscow. The first district in Moscow lost its hot water for three weeks on May 10 and the last will lose it on August 6.

Muscovites have adapted to living for a few weeks each year without hot water although accidents happen.

The death of the much-loved Soviet actor Anatoly Papanov in August 1987 was blamed on the lack of hot water. The 64-year-old died of a heart attack while taking a cold shower.

Tactics for dealing without hot water also include dousing yourself in cheap aftershave or perfume -- noticeable on Moscow’s close, stuffy metro system -- and showering at friends’ houses.

“We just organise parties at houses with hot water,” 16-year-old Tanya Lekvich said walking alongside her friend.

Let's try to survive REAL Russian challenge, which we got every summer at Moscow!

Not heating apartments in the winter. Germans you better get your heat for fall organized.

There’s a thread for that

Thread: It’s that time again in Russia – no hot water at homes and apartments for three weeks. Everyone has to take cold showers, even in Moscow.

Meanwhile, it’s summer in OP’s glorious Russian motherland.

Russia: Summer means cold showers

Every summer, Russian households have to do without hot water. For up to three weeks, everyone has to take cold showers — even in the ultramodern city of Moscow, writes DW's Yuri Rescheto.

"Modernization has reached new heights in Russia: You can now access the schedule for your building's hot-water shutdown online!" joke Muscovites. Meanwhile, they're busy putting pots on the stove and preparing to heat their water.

Every summer, for between 10 days and three weeks, there is no hot water in Russia. It makes no difference whether you live in the remotest corner of Khanty-Mansiysk or in the heart of the glittering metropolis of Moscow: This is the normal, 21st-century Russian reality. Only Westerners are surprised by it. Russians bear it with fortitude. They know it has to be this way. But ... why?

It all has to do with Russian central heating, a relic from the Soviet era that still operates in all the cities of the former USSR. This is a complex system of pipes several kilometers (miles) long, connected to hydroelectric power plants around each city that provide residential buildings with hot water. The water companies say that, in order to ensure that the system will operate reliably in winter, it must be maintained during the summer, and that it's only by doing this maintenance work that they can detect all the cracks in the pipes. The water temperature in the pipes is lowered to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), and the pressure in them is increased. Leaks are located and repaired, then checked again.

[link to www.dw.com (secure)]

Those are the privileged Russians.

Fun facts:

35 million Russians don't have indoor toilets
47 million don't have hot water at all
29 million don’t have any running water inside their homes
22 million don't have central heating

And it’s fucking cold in winter in Russia!


One Russian in Four Lacks an Indoor Toilet, One of Many Signs There are Now ‘Four Distinct Russias’

According to a new report by Russia’s state statistical agency, Rosstat, 35 million Russians live in houses or apartments without indoor toilets, 47 million do not have hot water, 29 million don’t have any running water inside their residences, and 22 million do not have central heating (ehorussia.com/new/node/17679).

In fact, only 62.7 percent of the Russian population has the usual accoutrements of modern existence – water in the house, plumbing, heating and gas or electric ranges, Rosstat says, a fact that must seem incredible to those who visit only Moscow or St. Petersburg but a fact of life for those who lives beyond the ring roads of the capitals.

Russian blogger Oleg Borovsky says that the image many have of Russia as one unified country is wrong. “In Russia today, there are practically no cities except for Moscow. Even St. Petersburg is beginning to recall places in distant regions, half-abandoned settlements, and aging infrastructure.

With regard to other “cities,” he continues, there is “nothing to say: there degradation and decline are obvious literally to the unaided eye. It is sufficient to go 50 versts from Moscow and you will see that there the snow isn’t cleaned from the streets (even in Moscow oblast!) let alone all the rest” of the trash.

“In the provinces, the ordinary man is a nonentity. And any attempt to achieve something often will end with big problems for him. In the best case, he won’t get what he hopes for; in the worst, he risks his freedom or even his life,” Borovsky continues. As a result, those who can leave these places do.

[link to russialist.org (secure)]

Nonsense. Russia has a lot of great cities that are just like other cities in Europe, if not better. Of course in the countryside things are different but that’s the same in other countries. I can show you places in the west that look poor even in supposedly wealthy and developed nations such as Italy, France, Germany etc…

Nonsense?

Those are the official stats from Russia’s state statistical agency, Rosstat.

It’s probably actually worse than that.

I have a propane camping hot water shower, it was cheap.
Are you telling me those don’t exist in Russia?

In Thailand they have little electric water heaters that are right there on the wall in the shower. Again, they are cheap.

So many solutions are available.

I don't know about that but I had to do a four day business trip to Moscow six years ago. My hotel had hot water, but the people in the office I had to work in didn't it smelled like a complex mixture of rose oil, Febreze, butt cracks, cheap after shave, dirty socks and armpits.

Found this article that is pretty accurate from my limited experience there:

There is something uncanny about smells in Russia. Not just the musty vapors that arise from the unwashed or improperly deodorized metro rider next to you. Stink is just a fact of metropolitan life. It’s the supposed “good” smells that are the most troublesome. Walking down a metro platform makes you an open target for a waft of strong perfume from Russian women. Their faux scent can be so strong that you wonder if they bathe in eau de Cologne or carry bottles of it in their enormous handbags for quarterly douses. But even the strong stench of cheap perfume is somewhat normal . . .

What isn’t “normal” is the plethora of scented toilet paper, tissue and overly scented soaps and lotions. When I first got to Moscow three weeks ago, one of the first trips to the market was to purchase a package of toilet paper. Toilet paper here is a serious purchase. One must find a brand that doesn’t feel like cardboard and doesn’t disintegrate on touch. The three-ply, bouncy, thick and fluffy rolls that populate the shelves at Target (or whatever might be your favorite American box store) just don’t exist. The Charmin squeeze test is an essential practice when making your choice. What I didn’t expect and discovered when I got home is that the toilet paper is scented. That’s right, scented. In fact, the vast majority of the asswipe has a manufactured smell added to it. There is paper in vanilla, strawberry, some kind of flower smell, and an assortment of “fresh” smells. Now why the hell would some one want scented toilet paper? Especially if its just going to be used to wipe the smelliest thing humans produce. Am I missing something and the paper also serves as air freshener? And what about concerns of chemical irritation?

The same goes with tissue. I bought one of those ten packs of tissue paper unaware that it has “Aroma” stamped on the front. I didn’t notice because I didn’t look. I didn’t look because I didn’t think to. Now I get a scent of fake strawberry every time I blow my nose.

Smell, it seems, is cultural. I already discovered that this is the case for taste. For example, in America everything has more sugar–yogurt, juice, ice cream, cake, chocolate–than its equivalents elsewhere. Apparently, in Russia products have more smell. It is not Russian companies that are selling products with more smell. International corporations like Kleenex, Dove et al, are producing scented items for a particular Russian market. For example, I brought a bottle of Dove “Go Fresh” cucumber and green tea body wash from the States. The other day I bought another Dove “Go Fresh” at my local market. The same brand, same bottle (though the Russian version is smaller. This is another difference: Americans like their products BIG.). Totally different strength of smell. The American version is a slight fake cucumber and green tea aroma. The Russian version pierces your lungs to the point of choking.

[link to srbpodcast.org (secure)]

This pig says he's never taken a 5 minute shower.

It takes more than 5 minutes to wash your hair and body thoroughly.

He is filthy and disgusting.