SUMMARY: Germany, Part I

So far, we have spent about 2 weeks in Germany, stopping in Lubeck, Berlin, and Dresden/Radebeul. To be honest, this has been our favourite country so far. For me, it is the availability of beer and for Jackie, it is the great history and culture (who am I kidding, Jackie likes the beer too). Anyway, here are our thoughts so far. We will be venturing back into Deutschland near the end of October to visit Bavaria, with its many castles, monasteries, and of course, beer halls.

Things we liked:

• Biergartens are everywhere, and usually serve both a pilsner option (for Daryl) and a hefeweizen option (for Jackie)
• Beer in the supermarket is really cheap; a 0.5l bottle is between 0.50 and 0.70 Euro (about $0.70 to $0.95 CAD).
• The people are friendly, at least more so than in Scandanavia. People will say hello on the street, and other runners will shout a “Gotenmorg” when passing us on our run
• The weather has been fantastic (not really fair to attribute this to the country, but still)
• There is good ethic food to be found, we found a couple good Vietnamese places in Berlin

Things we didn’t like:

• Internet availability and reliability has been quite shoddy, the wireless routers in the two places that even provided us with internet needed frequent resetting.
• Almost every washroom had a charge to use them
• Coffee quality has gone down since Copenhagen
• All TV shows are re-dubbed in German so we can only watch BBC world news

Interesting findings:

• EVERYONE is ALWAYS eating ice cream, whether walking down the street or at a restaurant (in the latter case, they are often splitting a huge sundae)
• When excited, children shout “YA-HOO”, which seems a little cartoonish.
• Most beers taste the same: all pilsners are the same crisp golden beer, while all hefeweizens are the same lighter-than-Hoegaarden beers. Both are as good as any in America, but there is not much to distinguish one from another.
• Germans can be a fairly portly bunch, particularly in the Dresden region (maybe this is linked to Point #1 in the interesting findings section).
  

Additional pictures that didn't make the cut in previous postings:

*Picture from Reichstag, Germany's Parliament building

*Entrance gate to old city of Lubeck

*TK Maxx (instead of TJ Maxx), these are all over Germany

*Standard communist-era car in Berlin

*Electric vehicle charging in streets of Berlin

*Race shot from Berlin Marathon

*Daryl enjoying the Berlin Marathon

*Standard sunglass reflection shot

*Daryl with bikes on the way to Dresden

*Cool personal mailbox in Radebeul, Germany

*Flower pic...for no reason

*Daryl playing with the camera at the bier garten in Radebeul

*Picture of "real" Europeans, for Dave