Auferstanden aus Ruinen - we love Germany!

[Pastychomper]

I love Germany because Butterstollen, delicious fruity Christmas cake, will be in the shops next week

I like Lidl for a similar reason, though I don't know if they'll have it so soon.

[Ben@Forest]

So 12 nights in Germany over. Most notable development is that German men have completely lost their fascination for cowboy boots and those faux snub nosed motorbike boots which you wouldn't wear riding a motorbike. Didn't see anyone wearing either. In fact l think Germany has lost a bit of its fascination with the USA.

I also think it's a bit dirtier than l remember, or maybe the UK is cleaner nowadays. Graffiti l think is more of a problem here than the UK. In the cities l can't really say it's worse - but it's bad - but even right out in the East German sticks small bits of infrastructure, like telephone connection boxes, are all tagged.

Definitely more men of Middle Eastern appearance and vastly more sub Saharan African men working as waiters or cooks. In Hamburg immigrants also going through bins for bottle deposits but plenty of rich Middle Eastern people there too. Saw almost no pro AFD graffiti but plenty of anti AFD or anti AFD stickers.

Good holiday, spoke a lot of bad German, surprising just how few people in the old DDR have any English, and the older citizens happily related that they'd had to learn Russian.

[Cyril Haearn]

There are plans to reconstruct a section of The Wall in Berlin temporarily, as an art project
Some prominent VIPs, slebs, actors support it
Not quite sure what to make of it, have not formed an opinion yet

There is a painted line on the ground where th wall used to be, Berlin is fascinating, there is a song: "Ich habe noch eine Koffer in Berlin": if one has ever been there one wants to go again sometime

[Ben@Forest]

There are plans to reconstruct a section of The Wall in Berlin temporarily, as an art project
Some prominent VIPs, slebs, actors support it
Not quite sure what to make of it, have not formed an opinion yet

There is a painted line on the ground where th wall used to be...

But there are still several sections of the original wall still standing. And at least one is an 'art project' though the graffiti art has of course been tagged over. It was reported only a month or so ago they'd found another original bit of the wall still standing. But, yes, where it's gone there is a line to mark it.

[Cyril Haearn]

I love Germany because Butterstollen, delicious fruity Christmas cake, will be in the shops next week

I like Lidl for a similar reason, though I don't know if they'll have it so soon.

Lidl has traditional clothes for the Oktoberfest in September, I would like to buy lederhosen but I am a non-drinking vegetarian

[pwa]

I love Germany because Butterstollen, delicious fruity Christmas cake, will be in the shops next week

I like Lidl for a similar reason, though I don't know if they'll have it so soon.

Lidl has traditional clothes for the Oktoberfest in September, I would like to buy lederhosen but I am a non-drinking vegetarian

Something not right about leather shorts. Think of the chafing.

[al_yrpal]

Heres some shots I took of the wall last September when I visited Berlin

Al

[Cyril Haearn]

Pictures of the East Side Gallery, that is art, +1

Read some more about the controversial plan to build a temporary wall, it will enclose an area where a "dictatorship" will be installed, with limited access, so people can understand how it was back then, the wall will go on 9. November, it will visit London later

Seems an interesting idea, worth a visit

Some crazy, fantastic things are organised in Berlin, a few years ago there was a show with gigantic puppets, a baby as big as a house (came from France actually)

Plus One for Berlin and 1989, as long as one does not live in the middle of the city

[al_yrpal]

Last September after flying to Berlin we took a train the Prague then a train to Vienna and finally a train to Budapest before flying home. We enjoyed Vienna the most especially our visit to the Belvedere. Walked our socks off navigating the trams buses and trains with the excellent Google Maps. We are not really City people and on our last day in Budapest we 'escaped to the country' taking a train out to a simple Hungarian village by the Danube. The whole trip was probably our least favourite jaunt.
I have spent a lot of time in Bavaria on business and pleasure. Instead of a cake on your birthday in the office you bring a cooked suckling pig for lunch! Done Octoberfest. Stayed on a farm for a week with my daughters exchange students parents. Loved it and have many friends there. Lovely people who sometimes visit us here. Took a party to Duxord for historic air day. 9 Spitfires chasing one Me 109!

Al

[Cyril Haearn]

A pig for a birthday? Not come across that fortunately, I prefer a Kirschwaelder Schwarztorte*

*Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, Black Forest Cherry Cake

[al_yrpal]

A pig for a birthday? Not come across that fortunately, I prefer a Kirschwaelder Schwarztorte*

*Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, Black Forest Cherry Cake

IME if you ask for that in the Black Forest you get blank looks, they seem to have no idea what you are talking about.

Al

[Cyril Haearn]

03 October is the German national holiday
A children's tivi programme with a big mouse and a small elephant has organised an open day for children to explore the queer ways of grownups in museums, factories, clinics etc etc
Read about a farmer who plans to celebrate with a display of pumpkins
..
Seems the Germans are fairly harmless

[Cyril Haearn]

There could never be a revolution in Germany because people would queue to buy platform tickets before occupying the train stations

This week there was a fire on an express train near Montabaur, the carriages were in an awful state afterwards
Fortunately a policeperson and several medics were on the train, no-one panicked, 510 people were evacuated, none were seriously hurt

Ordnung muss sein

[Ben@Forest]

There could never be a revolution in Germany because people would queue to buy platform tickets before occupying the train stations..

I refer my honorable friend to the revolutions in 1848, 1918, the Sparticist Uprising, the Beer Hall Putsch, the Hamburg Uprising... and all these were during Germany's modern incarnation. If you go back to when they were seperate states there were plenty of internicine wars and revolts - like the Munster rebellion which resulted in the Massacre of the Anabaptists.

German history is considerably more bloody than ours (UK and Ireland) - it's faintly amusing that many castles or town museums you visit there have exhibits of instruments of torture or torture chambers.... and less amusingly I'm not counting concentration camps.

[Cyril Haearn]

Plus One for federalism, Germany has 16 regional parliaments, there are 13 different combinations of ruling parties

There used to be two big parties (SDP + CDU/CSU) and one small one (FDP), now there are up to six parties, the greens are doing well because they are furthest from the right-wing afd, +1, and a long way from their radical origins too