“We will have to limit ourselves”

A little water, a little electricity saving – “You can’t really do more than that,” says Sebastian Darr.

The forty-year-old, who works as a retail salesman for a florist, lives with his wife and children, five and six years old, in a two-family house in Schmitten.

It is heated with oil.

"The ancillary costs will increase and we will have to limit ourselves," says the sole breadwinner.

However, he is resolutely opposed to autumn.

"Then we go to the playground more often than to the cinema or to the forest instead of to the zoo." You have to talk about it in the family and still stay positive.

“You have to bring joy to the children.” Showering less often, switching off the television and stereo system completely instead of leaving them on stand-by mode – his family has always been sensitive to such issues.

Also for

not simply pouring out used water, but collecting it and distributing it in the garden.

The children liked to play with water anyway.

The fact that the lawn in the garden is now dry doesn't bother him - "so what".

“I have always lived consciously”

"The situation is serious," says Beate Sander, "but I can't hear it anymore." The pensioner, who owns an apartment building in Frankfurt's Bornheim district, wished for "more serenity" on the subject and "less scaremongering".

The landlady, who had a new gas heating system installed three years ago and has been using less energy since then, has so far been spared the increased gas prices.

The agreed fixed price with the energy supplier runs until September.

She is prepared for the fact that prices will rise significantly.

Sander sees herself in the "privileged situation" of being able to pay higher prices, as she says.

That's why she rejects energy-relief packages, like the ones she recently used in the watering can principle.

As a private person, however, she only sees the possibility of "paying attention to small things", such as

wash your hands with cold water only or take shorter showers.

"For me, that has always been a matter of just two minutes." The tenants have always accepted that the heating is switched off between 11.45 p.m. and 5 a.m.

"In winter you have to see if you can turn the radiators down a notch." She thinks that's doable, says the Frankfurter, who has an RMV annual pass and prefers to take the bus and train to the car.

"I've always been conscious of the subject."

says the woman from Frankfurt, who has an RMV annual ticket and prefers to travel by bus and train than by car.

"I've always been conscious of the topic."

says the woman from Frankfurt, who has an RMV annual ticket and prefers to travel by bus and train than by car.

"I've always been conscious of the topic."

"I do not need much"

Light jeans, white canvas shoes - Ursula Karch is "84 years and three quarters" on the move.

The pensioner from Bornheim knows her monthly additional costs inside out: 170 euros for gas and 105 euros for electricity – the deductions have already been increased by the energy supplier.

Her three-room apartment on the ground floor is unfavorably located above a cold cellar.

"I pay the highest additional costs in the house," she says.

As a war child who has been through "completely different times", she doesn't want to whine.

Her husband died at the age of 37.

She had to work all her life.

"I have a good pension.

I'm fine.” In any case, she doesn't need much anymore, not even new clothes.

"I wear what's there." Instead, she prefers to put money aside for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

She is prepared for the fact that this may no longer be possible in the future given the exploding energy prices.

Likewise, that the room temperatures are lowered in winter.

"Then I just go to bed with a cup of coffee and a book.

I'm retired."