Every few days, my regular good-morning concert of yapping dogs, hammering neighbors, beeping cars and weeping babies is enriched by Beethoven’s Für Elise.

First I thought that one of the neighbors has a monotone taste in music and is playing the song on infinite loop. When the musical terror was right in front of the door once, I assumed that one of my housemates’ cell phone has a kitschy ringtone. Finally, my blogging housemate enlightened me that the song announces the arrival of the rubbish collection.

That’s actually a nice service for people who can’t remember that every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday you can put the far too ubiquitous plastic bags out for collection.

Once I saw a rubbish collection vehicle in the center of town, which played a different song. Apparently, every ward in Arequipa has its own rubbish collection music. With great delight I imagine the debates at  the city council meeting in which the decision was made which district got to use which song. Maybe someone was particularly clever and noticed that the copyright for Für Elise has already expired and thus no royalties are due.

(Zur deutschen Fassung.)