Broadband

[lethargic_man]

Here's a photo I grabbed from Google Maps' Street View, showing aviva_m's street:

On the left side of the double row of cobblestones down the middle, broadband is available; on the right side it is not. Anyone like to hazard a guess why?

Clue #1: Look closely at the writing on the poster.
Clue #2: Consider the implications of the lack of houses immediately on the right of the cobblestones.

Comments

[curious_reader]

If you hadn't said it's aviva_m's street I would have thought it is in NW London. I passed those bridges in London. I think it was Kilburn and I think the one on Hoop Lane looks similar, too.

[lethargic_man]

Railway bridges probably look the same everywhere...

[curious_reader]

The amount of bikes are actually a give away. They only cycle so much in Germany and Holland not England and especially not London.

[lethargic_man]

You've evidently never seen a Boris bike rack. I'd include a picture of one on my bike route, but Google Maps don't seem to have updated their Street View since the bike racks were deployed, so have a link showing one at a random site somewhere in London instead.

[curious_reader]

They are still not private. Maybe one or two people borrow it for a few minutes and come back. You show a photo of private bikes. They are not directly in front of a station either. I see bikes in front of the St Albans train station directly in front of the main entrance if at all.

[naath]

Here in Cambridge... there are bikes parked almost everywhere you could imagine parking a bike and some places that you probably wouldn't. We are rather atypical for England though.

[green_knight]

I'm finding the number of bikes complete unremarkable. The bike lane painted in the road, on the other hand, is a not-Britain giveaway.

[lethargic_man]

Not sure what you mean by that. There's plenty of cycle lanes, at least in London. They tend to feature green tarmac rather than just a line painted on the road, though.

[green_knight]

In many German cities, that single white line - sometimes with the occasional bike symbol, but often without - was all you'd got. They'd use red tarmac in places, but very often, it was just the white lanes - which is better han nothing; at least the German drivers mostly respect them.

On the other hand, Oxford has those green bike boxes at a number of traffic lights, and I have yet to see a single bus driver (with one exception) actually honouring them.

[pseudomonas]

I can't really read the text on the poster; is the area regularly underwater or something like that?

[lethargic_man]

You don't need to be able to make out the words, just the language. Alternatively, the icon I used for my post is another clue, for those in the know.

And no, the area is not underwater.

[pseudomonas]

I can make out the language from the larger words, but this doesn't help me much. Am I right in thinking that by the double row of cobblestones you mean the two rows of wider stones in the foreground pointing towards (and away from) the camera, between which the white line terminates?

[lethargic_man]

I meant the double row of normal-sized cobblestones between the wider ones you refer to, also pointing towards and away from the camera, but the distinction does not matter much. There is a plaque on the pavement (hidden behind the bike) indicating their significance

[pseudomonas]

looking at your icon caption: it's not the former East/West border, is it?

[lethargic_man]

Yes: the cobblestones mark the line of the Berlin Wall. Now can you complete the remaining pieces of the puzzle?

[pseudomonas]

well, I'm guessing that house-building and infrastructure stopped at the border, so a) any conduits through which cables might be retrofitted won't cross the line if they were built 1945-1989, and that b) since 1961 there's presumably a massive great concrete foundation under there that's not trivial to thread cables through.

[lethargic_man]

Not quite. There are houses on the east side, just not immediately: the east side of the wall was cleared to form a "death strip" so nobody could even get close to the wall to try and cross it. And these houses did have 'phone lines installed; but the East Germans were cheapskates and fitted 'phone lines made of aluminium or something, which can't support the data rates required for broadband. Though see also aviva_m's comment downthread...

[aviva-m.livejournal.com]

The actual answer is even more depressing (most parts of former East Berlin actually do have broadband).