Originally Posted by Aptmunich

Maybe they don't have repair centres there?

In europe at least, everything used to go to the netherlands... (although I think the service contractor there has gone bust).
Funny thing about it is that apple support is located in Ireland, so you get german spoken with Irish accents (when I call from Germany - we end up switching to english...) arranging to ship things to and from the Netherlands...

Aaah good 'ol Globalisation!