I just received a book published by the town of Büsingen that it
issued in 1990 to commemorate the town's 900th anniversary. I created
a Büsingen album in the group photo section, and will place
interesting photos there. The first one I did was of the mayor at his
desk with a Swiss and a German phone on it. The caption in the book
says that it was at the time, at least, the only Swiss phone in the
exclave. There are now Swiss public phone booths in the town, but I'm
not sure if residents are now permitted to have private connections to
their homes or not.

The history of postal services in the book reveals that the Swiss post
code for this German locale went into effect only on 1 October 1986.
There is a text of a protocol that was attached to the request the
town made to the Swiss government for a Swiss post code, that
illustrated the problems the locals were having.

A resident drove out of the exclave to a town in Switzerland about 15
miles away, not needing to pass any border control point or customs to
get there. He saw an electrical appliance he wanted, found out who
the manufacturer was near Geneva, and returned home after his trip and
ordered it by phone. The order was not initially filled, because his
Büsingen address, with only the German post code available at the
time, was international to the Geneva company, which didn't export its
goods in small retail sales. When the Büsinger called the firm to see
what had happened, the firm admitted it just put the order in the
files without filling it. The buyer told the company that he was in
Swiss customs territory, and just because the address was German, it
was not an export sale (which wa wrong, because he was in Germany).
Anyway, the firm believed him and mailed the package without customs
decalrations, but addressed to the German post code.

When the mailed packet arrived at the sorting center in Geneva, it was
routed to containers going to Germany - in this case to Romanshorn.
Switzerland on the south shore of the Lake of Constance (Bodensee),
was put on a boat going across the lake to Friedrichshafen, Germany.
The German post presented it to German customs. There it was "taxed",
and a notice attached to tell the delivering mailman to leave a
postcard for the addressee to pick up the packet after paying customs
at the nearest customs office. Then, the packet was put on a train
destined for Schaffhausen (Switzerland), through which all mail to
German postcode D-7701 flows. Because the packet came from Germany,
it was presented to the Swiss customs at Schaffhausen, which likewise
attached a note to it stating that the addressee in Germany must come
to the Swiss customs to collect the packet and pay the duty. It was
then given to the Swiss automobile (bus) delivery service which route
(Schaffhausen-Büsingen-Dorflingen) delivers mail and drops mail
addressed to Büsingen at the post office for delivery. All that govt
delivered were the postcards inctructing the addressee to go to
Schaffhausen to "rescue" the packet. The addressee went to the Swiss
customs to explain that the origin of the goods was intially in
Switzerland and duty shoudl not have been levied. The Swiss accepted
that and gave him his packet. Nothing was said about the German duty,
from which the addressee was also exempt... maybe it's still on the
books to be collected. Who knows? Anyway, the item was mailed in
Geneva on 18 October 1980, and it's odyssey ended on 8 December, 51
days later for what should have been no more than a 200 mile trip.
With the Swiss post code, the book says all of these problems
disappaeared - but that it took the German government over three years
from the date the Swiss agreed to provide a post code for it to
approve and permit the Swiss to actually apply the code and no longer
send the mail through the German motherland.