One decision we made before going on a nearly three week long vacation in Germany was to completely block out all media. Not to read any newspapers, not to watch television nor listening to radio. That turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. It was so wonderful to get out of the daily grind of politics, polling and budgetary discussions around the clock on the cable networks.
Our time in Germany was spent with family and friends and equally divided between Bavaria and Lower Saxony in the northern part of the country. The weather was great, not too hot nor rainy or cold. June is always a good month to visit Germany since schools are still in session and the tourist season has not yet fully begun.
This particular vacation was different from previous ones in that we were accompanied by our grand-nephew Kevin – a 20-year old junior at USC – for whom this was the first such visit to Germany. Our agenda was focused on introducing him to the way German families live and enjoy life in general. We therefore did not race all over the place from one worthy sight (of historical significance) to the next. While he had practiced some German before the trip, he found that most people, especially the younger ones were eager to try their English on him and so communications with Germans never turned out to be a problem.
Yet he noticed some differences from his California lifestyle. Nowhere was he offered ice cubes in his drinks. To get non-carbonated water, he had to always asked for it but he learned quickly by asking for “Stilles Wasser“. Even in most stores/supermarkets, non-carbonated water was seldom if at all available. But he accepted it and he compensated for it by enjoying the German beers, we even visited a famous brewery in Erding near Munich where they make among other brands Erdinger Weissbraeu, a popular thirst quencher. It is now Kevin’s favorite beer and he found out where he can get it in Los Angeles.
We noticed that Germany has made great strides when it comes to installing renewable energy sources. You can see solar panels on roofs everywhere on commercial as well as private properties. Another difference were the multitudes of ’round-about traffic’ intersections in all towns. It appears that Germany has adopted this method of traffic control from their French neighbors who have had these traffic tools for many years in their country.
Like the citizenry of many other European countries, the Germans do not generally like their tax rates and also feel that their country is the major bailout rescuer of the European Union. If you want to get into a heated discussion with them, just bring up this topic and you will see very little support for the actions of their government in this regard. Another major concern is the high price of gasoline. They are paying about 1.53 euros for a liter of gasoline. We computed this to be about $8.50 per gallon! More than twice as much what we pay for gasoline in the United States. And fuel efficiency is not that much better than it is here. They have a different way of measuring it, yet we paid for gasoline for our rental car, a small BMW 1er, while driving about 610 miles, approximately $180.00.
But we were on vacation and did not waste too much time dwelling on that. Life was good and we enjoyed ourselves and have hundreds of photos to remember it all. Being back in the States, we got used to our routines here fairly quickly and we are glad to be living here. We even found out that we had not missed much of any significance in terms of national, state and local news.