Skellig Gra
Member
85,000 defects. Sounds like an Ubisoft release.
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How Berlins Futuristic Airport Became a $6 Billion Embarrassment
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Freeza Under The Shower
Member
It's amazing how often this (still) happens.
Part of the reason for that is contractors jacking the prices right up because they know the government will pay it.
please tell me you are kidding.
Wat? Why would they do that?
Refer to the end of the last page, no joke.
Well, it's planned not to stay this way forever:
Line U55 is the one that's currently connected to nothing. Oh, well, MPs can get to the Brandenburg gate or the main station (that at least is useful), but that's it. The dotted line means it will be connected to U5 sometime, but that sometime is probably 2055 or something.
BertramCooper
Banned
No worries, Berlin.
Just look at it as a $6 billion film set for any TV show or movie airport scenes.
Just look at it as a $6 billion film set for any TV show or movie airport scenes.
Berlin is poor? Interesting, I always kinda assumed that it was one of the wealthiest cities in Germany, because, well, that is really the only city you hear about in the American press. What are the wealthiest Cities then?
maniac-kun
Member
Munich. I guess.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
Ehm, no? People faking shit is kind of what happens when you put extreme importance of things that are easy to fake, and prove almost nothing. If I were a psychopath, I would totally see right away how faking a degree is much more efficient than spending four years and a lot of money on getting 'for real'. (and I can obviously see this anyway, but I bothered with years in education anyway. Don't mistake my comment for being 'about me', which is kind of weird to do anyway, in my opinion. )
Note that 2% of any population can be legit measured as being a psychopath, but that this is skewed towards lower IQ's and that the lack of emotions is in no way exclusive to the combination of Anti-social personality disorder + Pathological liar ( = psychopath).
And to make everything ever better, the quickest way to get people to behave according to their basest impulses is making stuff competitive in an abstract manner.
btw, everybody cheats by 25%. So any resume or job application should be assumed to be at least 20% bullshit (I wanted to say 1/4 before I realised I was doing it wrong, heh), and a pathological liar would have absolutely no problem making that 100%.
also, construction and real estate is kind of notorious for shenanigans, because there money to be had with little accountability. Have you never heard of 'cowboys' before? Some free advice for any construction you might want to have done on your house: research who you're hiring for the job. Seriously.
So no, I wasn't kidding. They tend to be faked PhD's and other signs of 'supreme importance' though (slightly lesser form but more common: extreme plagiarism or faking data). Obviously, a real psychopath doesn't care about some little league degree, it's the top they want to be at, not the middle or the bottom.
oh. Did I complete misinterpret that reply? Whoops.
for reference, this is the relevant post on the previous page:
Auto-Reply
Member
What is so expensive with putting some concrete on the ground?
... am I over simplyfying things?
Jezbollah
Member
The LHR plan includes destroying two towns and also building a runway over one of the busiest stretches of road network in the world.
I'm surprised most of the replies here put the blame only in negligence (both in the planning, building and awarding of the contracts) and won't even dare mention corruption (again, in all sides). The costs of a project don't balloon such an incredible amount just out of regular ineptitude. We're talking about a ludicrous overbudget. The same way Calatrava's projects always scale out of proportion and even when everybody knows this he still gets the contracts. And then he does it again. It's not just a matter of poor management.
They ran out of money during the construction of what was meant to be an extension, so they made the best of what they had which was 3 stations which are run as a single isolated line shuttle (one train on one track for the entire 'line')
Germany is similiar to the USA actually a federal republic of 16 states of which three are actually cities. These three free cities; Berlin, Hamburg and Bremen are rather poor since they are supposed to work like countries, but can't since they're obviously not. They are problems with taxing and such when people just casually come from outside the city borders. Hamburg is kinda making it, sinceit has a strong industry with the harbour, but Bremen is really just dying very slowly.
Hey, they had a schedule to keep. Can't just dick around with background checks all day.
Captain Chaos
Member
600 million or 6 Billion?
KillerMan91
Member
Reminds me of our fifth nuclear reactor here in Finland. Original completion date was 2009. Newest estimate for completion is 2016. Original cost estimate was 3 billion euros. Newest is 8.5 billion...
Munich and Frankfurt. Otherwise small cities you never heard of, with large industrial parks. The area (Schönefeld) where the airport is getting built is due to that actually quite wealthy, since the companies are already there lol.
6.5 billion and it probably won't stop there.
Yeah. let's all watch RTL2 "Action News" and "Wok WM" on Pro7, it's for freeee!!!11
(Thank god we have well financed public broadcasters in Germany alongside the private channels.)
Sure, but ARD/ZDF wasting money on crap like Tatort or The Oscars isn't ideal either. At least they didn't get the rights to the next two Olympics this time, let's see how that'll work.
Art Teitlebaum
Member
Don't shit on my 'Tatort', dude. I can't imagine a Sunday evening without these.
Art Teitlebaum
Member
The cult of social commenting disguised as a crime investigation. In my neighborhood there is a café, where complete strangers meet for watching the thing together. It's groovy!
I love life too much to be watching Tatort.
Art Teitlebaum
Member
Haha, my wife is pretty much the same. She only likes the funny ones from Münster, which are more or less pure slapstick nowadays. But seriously, there's a lot of political and social discourse going on in most of the other 'Tatorts', which is quite important in our more and more superficial TV program. Love the Öffis for this.
Schönefeld it pretty bewildering for visitors. I remember leaving the airport and trying to figure out how to get into the city. We basically just had to follow where most people were going, and even then it was pretty unclear.
Is there any push to change that stupidity? I can't imagine it is all that popular in those cities if they are being screwed by it.
Not at all. There were people trying to get them to form a Nordstaat since the war ended, but Bremen would lose power in the process since the countries have influence on national level even the small ones. Plus the rich countries are paying money to cover the poor ones and if Bremem would fuse with lower saxony they would get less money out of the pot overall.
And of course all the shizzle about culture and tradition thst would be lost. It was after all a free city since the days of the HRE. It's also a traditional fortress for the SPD. Bremen is always voting socialists and thus they block too to not lose political power.
industrian
will gently cradle you as time slowly ticks away.
The infinite wonders of having a client that will never default on its payments.
I guess we found our culprit. Not all that surprising...
I wish they'd use that money and give more funding to ARTE. After watching a few imported "documentaries" from the US, I really grew to appreciate everything Arte does.
What a fucking omnishambles!
I'll read the article properly later, but the paragraph that stood out to me was the decision AFTER breaking ground to redesign the hall and make everything bigger to build the shopping mall. As a PM who has had stakeholders change tack like this midway through a project that above everything else stood out as both typical and probably the most damaging...and the design guy...jesus...
Still, as a Brit who has much experience of cost-overunning projects, this did make me smile.
I'll read the article properly later, but the paragraph that stood out to me was the decision AFTER breaking ground to redesign the hall and make everything bigger to build the shopping mall. As a PM who has had stakeholders change tack like this midway through a project that above everything else stood out as both typical and probably the most damaging...and the design guy...jesus...
Still, as a Brit who has much experience of cost-overunning projects, this did make me smile.
TanookiTom
Member
but they actually are working on extending U5, you can see the construction site all the way across "Unter den Linden" and going to Alexanderplatz. I think they're planning to finish it by 2017 and there has already been quite some progress.
Edit: nevermind, not gonna happen before 2020 apparently :/
If they don't have proper signs, that definitely is a problem. But you basically just hop on/off the S-Bahn and you're there! U-Bahn is also an option. I actually prefer that one to Tegel where you have to take a bus to get to the airport.
efyu_lemonardo
May I have a cookie?
Wow.
This part I found especially odd:
This part I found especially odd:
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How did this man earn his reputation as a cost cutter?
The population is still lower than it was before the war. No one wanted to live in the west of the city (for obvious reasons) during the communist period so they shipped in bohemians and artists to actually populate the place, and it retains that character today, while all the factories in the eastern part fell in to disrepair after the fall of the GDR. Munich has, IIRC, been the London or New York equivelant since the end of the war.
Adding to this, don't forget that Berlin has been the capital city of (reunited) Germany for only some 20 years. Before the Berlin Wall fell, the capital was Bonn and relocation took a while. That may be another factor why Berlin isn't your "typical" capital city.
TanookiTom
Member
Germany does not have an equivalent of London or New York. Berlin might have been that in the 20ies and early 30ies. Munich is a rich city and it's booming, but what global (or even countrywide) significance does it have, except maybe an economic one?
Germany is pretty decentralized, no single city is dominating. You've got Hamburg in the north, Cologne and Düsseldorf in the West, Munich in the South, Frankfurt in the center and Berlin in the east. Culturally speaking, I think no German city can compete with Berlin on an international level. And it's also larger than the second and third cities, Hamburg and Munich, combined. But no single city in Germany combines the cultural, economic/financial and political influence of say London or New York.
Poodlestrike
Banned
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg are the top 3 wealthiest cities according to a google search. I visited Hamburg and Berlin and Hamburg was definitely much more of a thriving place from what I saw. Some really great street art in Berlin but it feels more touristey than anything else.
Berlin really comes to life at about 6am on a Sunday.
Edit: after you've been out since friday
I agree. Berlin is ok once your too drunk to care. Last time I visited that city I got swine flu just from using the S-Bahn.
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