Germany in short

A month in Freiburg, a small, sunny (sunny by European standards. Among german cities, this receives the maximum sunlight in a year) city on the western edge of Schwarzwald (thats what Blackforest is called in German) has passed by in a whisker. Here is a small effort on my part to help you understand Germany and the Germans slightly better.

1. Germans love fußball, potatoes, ham and beer – unfortunately I dont drink

2. Germans never share food – this is a habit I find quite agonizing. Imagine the torture you go through when you watch your professor and his phd student chomping on everything from apples to cupcakes in front of you without ever offerng you a bite, and all this when you are living a frugal existence and trying to save that last cent ;)

3. Germans dont have ceiling fans; neither do they have ACs and mind you the temperatures do cross the 30s in peak summer. (well this is true about most european countries though)

4. Germany seems to have Arabs as the maximum immigrants. You will find Turks, Syrians, Lebanese, Iranians in plenty here.

5. Germany has left-hand drive cars and so cars travel from the right-side lane. You may say that everbody knows this and whats the need to state it here. But there is, because it is not enough to just know this for a fact. Its impportant to ingrain it in yourself as a habit. You will realize what I am saying when, while crossing the straße after ensuring that there isnt any approaching vehicle within a mile, you suddenly turn around and discover a huge truck within feet – the sooner you forget the 'look to your right before crossing' rule and imbibe the 'look to your left before crossing' rule, the better it is.

6. Germans (as do most other Europeans) have coffee after lunch.

7. The most popular cars here are Volkswagon, followed by Opel and Renault. All buses and taxis are by Mercedes, by default. You will also find Mercedes small cars here.

8. 'V' is pronounced as 'F'. So volks is folks, Vauban is Fauban and Sharapova is spelt as Sharapowa.

9. Spargel (Esparagus in English) is a delicacy here, atleast in southwest Germany – I quite liked it too.

10. Destuche Bahn is by far the best Railway company in the world. SNCF can have its TGV and Benilux can have their Thalys, but when it comes to easy access to information and punctuality, noone comes anywhere near the Germans. Their website is so easy to use and provides so much information that I can say with certainity that, even for an Indian, rail travel in Germany is much easier than it is India or any other English-speaking country.

11. Germans dont have switches for plug points – found this extremely strange. You just plug-in your device and it starts working. To turn it off, you have to unplug it from the socket.

12. Deutsch, like most European languages, takes the liberty to spell and pronounce proper nouns from other languages as and how they like. for example French in Deustch becomes Franzoish and Greece becomes Greichenland.