Granted I've only been to Würzburg, Freiburg, Aalen, Berlin and Saxony (Gräfendorf)) and mostly in summer so my experience is limited...anyway here's what I love about going there as a tourist and with my German fiancé.
Bread
It's 100x better than anything you get in Britain. German bakeries are the real deal and frankly, what we get in our country is laughable. Germans look upon British bread with rightful and utter contempt. There are so many varieties regionally and even locally. Briegel for example seems to really only be available in Aalen and someone from just up the road in Stuttgart wouldn't be able to get it in the city. But it's bloody marvellous. And that's before we even get to the sweet treats! And the displays are always impeccable, even in their chain stores. I'm making myself cry just writing this.
Beer
Germany is the home of quality beer. And it doesn't cost a fortune. You can get a proper case of 16+ bottles for a fraction of what it'd cost you here. 500ml bottles too. There, maybe a couple of Euros max. for a bottle of Augustiner. Here, it'll set you back more than double. Which also makes me wonder why Scottish brewed craft beer costs so much in our supermarkets.
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| At my happiest |
Wine
I'm no wine expert so I'll just say chilled Franconian wine down in Würzburg is delicious. Have a glass on a summer evening standing on the Alte Main Brücke and it doesn't get much better. It's one of the few occasions where white wine beats red for me. Can you imagine standing on a public footbridge in Glasgow drinking wine? It'd be carnage.
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| Prost! |
Kartoffelsalat
That's potato salad but not the crappy over-mayo'd version you get at the supermarket deli counter. Yeah, you can make it at home fairly easily but it tastes so much better with some pork chops and a glass of wine mentioned above!
Meat
Now don't get me wrong, Scotch beef and pork wins over anything for me. However, the sheer variety of cold meats you can get at a deli, or cured meats too, is great. None of your bog-standard cooked ham. My favourite is perhaps blood sausage (Blutwurst). Also, the variety of ways you can have your meats cooked at dinner just seems to be more impressive.
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| Meat and spaetzle - win |
Breakfast options
I don't think this is specific to Germany but more a European thing but I love having breakfast on the continent. In Germany, you'll get fresh bread, a few nice cheeses, a selection of the cured meats and some fruit/berries. Sadly, they haven't adopted square sausage yet.
Kicker
Okay, enough of the food and drink. I love Kicker magazine. It's a proper weekly mag/paper covering German football (and other sports) with great reporting and roundups of the weekend's action. I don't understand much of it 😄 as my language skills are still badly lacking but I love it nonetheless. In Britain we have monthlies which are more broad ranging on topics and for weekly reports, we have pretty poorly put together supplements in the newspapers.
Hugendubel
It's basically the German version of Waterstones but I love their stores. I mean, I love any bookstore but there's a thrill to visiting a bookstore where the majority of books are in a language you don't know. It's like a wee peak at a different culture, though in reality much of the books and authors you'll find are very much available in the UK too.
Osiander
The branch in Aalen specifically. There's not a ton of shops in the town centre I'm fussed over but this is a must-visit. Again, much like a smaller Waterstones but I enjoy the little German quirks like when in summer they start stocking the back-to-school stuff for kids' 'schultüte'.
DM
A better version of Superdrug. Not specific to Germany. I visited my first DM in Italy. Maybe it's just the tourist in me but I just prefer the greater variety and, imo, quality of products.
Cafe culture
Kaffee und Kuchen. It should be a staple in everyone's day across the world. Why do we not do this more in the UK? It's not like we aren't also addicted to coffee and we certainly love cake! The Germans are certainly more productive than us and it doesn't seem to hurt them. But also at the weekend just having a nice glass of wine al-fresco at a local cafe without it turning into a sesh.
Feierabend
The 5pm beer. As above, a quick beer or two before heading home. And they are mostly responsible enough to enjoy one o the commute home without being seen as a danger to society in the way we instantly label someone drinking on a train at 5pm. I'm guessing a lot of Germans don't actually do this and it's a far more health conscious nation that ours but the mere fact it's okay to do it makes me jealous.
German women
My fiance is German and I'm happily loved up with her but one thing that I'm struck by every time I visit Germany is the general lack of perma-orange lassies. It's just not a thing. Obviously in the south they get pretty great, genuinely sunny warm summers so the need to fake-tan is zero. However, even the girls who aren't in to sun-worshipping don't feel the need to douse themselves in the fake stuff. I have no idea how it took off in this country but it looks utterly shit and places German women on a tier above their UK counterparts.
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| Lisa and her best pal, Beckie |
*For balance I should note that my own diminutive Scottish stature is also more than felt by myself when I visit Germany. The guys are just built bigger and stronger. At which point, I lean in to my Scottishness and have a beer, accepting there is nothing I can do about genetics.
Cycling
In many towns and cities it's simply a way of life. People accept cycling on the road. It's not just about toleration, it's culturally embedded. The roads and traffic systems are built for it, with cycle lanes not simply shoehorned on to already-narrow roads.
On the flipside, I'm not a fan of the Autobahn and the German obsession with cars and driving at insane speeds is kind of weird.
German TV
I like ZDF and Das Erste. Thankfully with IPTV I can catch the odd episode of Bares für Rares (a mashup of Bargain Hunt and Antiques Roadshow). I also enjoy the presentation of their morning TV programme MOMA but given they're an hour ahead I rarely watch it when I'm home in Scotland.
Seeing Lisa (fiance) happy at home with her friends
I love seeing her back in her home town catching up with friends, being able to converse in her own language and enjoying her own culture. Not to say she doesn't love Scotland and parts of our way of life but it can't compare to the place she grew up and feels in her bones. As an outsider I just love to see it and be part of it. I can't help but think her friends think she's crazy each time she flies back to our dreich wee country and I'm kinda confused as well but very grateful she does!
Wine festivals
There's tons of them! Whether it's in a town hospital yard or in the middle of a forest, wine festivals in the sun are amazing. Usually consisting of long benches, wine sellers (beer too) and lots of good food as well as live music, you can't help but have fun.
Special mention: Freiburg
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| View from our hotel room |
€49 public travel ticket
For less than 50 euros (about £45) you can travel across Germany on public trains. You still pay extra for the longer haul inter city trains but if you were super dedicated you could technically go from Berlin to Munich for a fraction of the price. Given that a monthly ticket from East Kilbride to Glasgow costs in the region of £100 these days that is mindblowing. Remember, Germany is almost five times larger than Scotland's mainland as well.
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Okay, that's me out. I could just as easily add ‘general beauty of the place and friendliness of the people I’ve met’. I'm sure I've forgotten something or other but there's my list and I can't wait to go back and eventually move there one day.
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