der Nachbar m. neighbour; (in Nachbarwohnung) next door neighbour also Nachbarin f
Apparently Germans really trust their neighbours. As I found out the other day, any package or parcel sent to you via Deutsche Post can also be delivered to your neighbour if you are not home. Then you get this notice and have to knock on your neighbour's door to get your package back. (Or spend half an hour trying to figure out which of your neighbours is a major cosmetics company. Hint: none.) I didn't think that Germans were particularly neighbourly - let's just say I didn't get any housewarming gifts, and some of our neighbours seem to use the communal areas like the lobby as a dumping ground for weird garbage they don't want to be seen carrying to the dumpster (like, oh, say a box of stained mannequin heads). Yes, this service means that you can pick up your package outside of postal office hours. However, it also means that your neighbour could be keeping tabs on your online purchasing habits, or worse yet, just keep your stuff. Given that we already lost a laundry load's worth of new clothing to a neighbour in Toronto, I'm not exactly thrilled with this prospect. Plus what if the neighbour holding your package turns out to be mannequin-head guy? You don't want to knock on that door after daylight hours.
I'm not sure if the same custom is followed by the BW Post, the rival postal service that runs in Baden-Württemberg alongside the privatized Deutsche Post. They have their own stamps and their own postmark, but I have never seen their cargo-bikes on the street (that's the way German mail gets where it's going). Clearly somebody in South Germany has been reading The Crying of Lot 49.
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