On May 28, I forgot to add my third photo of Fürth. This shows the latest efforts to make the inner city green. Today’s paper shows two people tending their plants. Herr Jahreis of the City planning office says ‘So langsam wird aus der Steinwüste eine Streublumenwiese” (the desert of stone is gradually turning into a flowery meadow).

The trouble is, the really striking thing about these turn-of-the-20th-century streets is their very lack of green.

A house owner whose building is in the subsidized area (there are EU funds) can get 100% subsidy for this. A lady in Theaterstraße is strewing pepper on her creeper to keep dogs off. 10,000 euros per year are available for making houses and inner courtyards greener. I can understand the courtyards – there are 750 of those in the inner city alone, and Fürth has more than 2000 listed buildings (I’m sitting in one now), more than practically any other city. But is it right to destroy the sight of beautiful rows of sandstone houses by putting creepers all over them? Perhaps I am just too negative. I wonder what the city historian (Stadtheimatpflegerin) Barbara Ohm (author, inter alia, of ‘Durch Fürth geführt’) thinks of this?

This is my real worry. These before and after pictures on how to improve your office come from a 1995 German magazine.