Ends

One side, or both, temporarily, closed the border crossing in case, for an undetermined period of time. They set down those blocks so people don’t simply open the gate and cross as they please (which they probably did before, even in case the bar wasn’t permanently standing upright anyway). Could be that they, in effect, just blocked it for personal travelers and commercial cargo vehicles, as it seems to me that tractor drivers or other locals just tend to go around it from time to time.

There’s lots of these little country roads in Europe which cross borders and never had real toll buildings, perhaps just a small booth or maybe never even that, only those red-white tollgate bars and a guard. But, since the creation of the Schengen area, it became common for crossings like these to never having been serviced by border personnel ever again…

Many of those rural streets and their crossings however, despite traversing factually open borders for ages, are just allowed for – yes, legal to use by, for crossing into the neighboring country – people who live in that area! Or rather: for cars with regional license plates.

I don’t know if that was the situation or what the deal was there before they put down these concrete blocks, but with the shift towards rightwing ideology all across Europe, the push for faschist bs and “concerns about immigration practices” whathaveyou, it doesn’t surprise me at all that they did.

Because keeping illegals out is easier that way. Or something. It would scare voters / the people™ if they/we didn’t! I’m pretty sure this came out of some politician’s promises. Yay! /s

That’s good news. I hope that trend persists then.

Got no “vintage” hardware sadly. In a VM it’s not the same. I still have a Floppy drive, but those disks were all corrupted eons ago. I wonder how long my heaps of gamer magazine and bundle-box (bought at Aldi for practically nothing ^_) CDs are still gonna last…

They were the best of times, that’s for sure!

I had never heard of that around here (Germany). Got my first PC '99, so I should have noticed; was looking everywhere for cheap Software deals. But there were some other companies which gave out free CD-ROMs as advertising with shareware and demo games. Some of those games were never finished, lol.

The Internet Archive has those Nestlé CDs btw :)

Proper Tofu, smoked. Press the water out, dice, shake in a bag with oil, sesame and flour, then stir-fry. Try that, just one more time (ofc you don’t have to), with matching sides, and see how you like that. Can be quite not-so-bad.

But I can understand that you don’t like it!

200+ Shareware games on a CD, played the shit outta those. And they came in magazines or were given out completely free.

I believe demos for games should still be the norm.

I fucked around so long that I failed the mission. It gave a prompt that I had 17 minutes left to do the last thing, and ran out by 20 seconds or sth.

Gotta give that game a whirl again soon, with proper textures & mods & fool around with ReShade for hours until my back hurts and I gotta lay down after an hour of actual gameplay, muhaha.

I forgot to mention: If the old veneer is coated with kinda thickish laquer, you should try how sanding works; if it’s hard work, you could try a hot-air gun on it. You can then either scrape the old coating off while it’s hot, or burn it kinda crispy - it should make the sanding-down process a lot easier.

But wear proper masks for all those steps and make sure there’s enough air flow!

Edit: Be careful not to burn the wood if you try that method! :P

It’s gonna be hard and time-consuming work if you do it like I did, but the result is worth it.

I would sand 'em down, apply filler (bought, or you could, as I did, use some of the dust + wood glue) to where ever there’s a big scratch or chunk missing, and for the final step, apply varnish or something like linseed oil (if the wood has a nice grain). Just did all that in an old flat my family and I are currently renovating! Hope that helps. :)