Von Heinz Meertz
We’ve been going to Tenerife for extended periods for years now. And we’ve noticed something that we can’t quite make sense of, either in the Canary Islands or in Germany.
It’s all about getting into the car, starting the engine and then taking your time to read all your new messages on your mobile or make a phone call. Some people even get out of the car to run an errand whilst the engine is running. But why?
By the way: it’s not just motorists who do this: at the airport, at 21 degrees, there’s a bus with its engine running, its air conditioning set to 19 degrees, now waiting with the door open until everyone has got on.
The „Your air is my air“ campaign in the Canary Islands
We’ve been thinking about how to politely draw someone’s attention to this senseless behaviour. To do this, we’ve drawn a picture. In Spanish, the message reads: „Your air is my air“ – along with a sketch of a crossed-out exhaust pipe symbol and a „thank you“.
The Canarians were very friendly and switched off the engine. Some even gave us the note back. We wouldn’t have dared to do that in Germany. In a big city like Cologne, you could very easily end up in trouble with the wrong sort of people.
Incidentally, back home it’s not allowed to leave the engine running unnecessarily without driving off. To this day, we still don’t understand why people behave like that.
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