You are planning a trip to germany? You have never been there before? You don’t know what to expect and how to behave?
Let me help you. Warning: A little bit of humour may have crept inadvertently into this opinion. Anyone knows, of course, that we Germans possess no such thing, but I wouldn’t guarantee that what I have written is irreproachably humour-free. So, complaints will be graciously accepted, but to no effect whatsoever. No, you can’t have your money back.

A very wise man once declared that he liked Germany so much he’d rather have two of them. Well, he got his ways – up to 1990. Then the two German tribes called Wessi and Ossi (no, they haven’t got anything to do with Aussies) found themselves quite unexpectedly under the roof of one single state and one single boastful chieftain with language pronouncing disorders. (His super-human physical size enabled him to function as a roof for 80 million human beings. In this respect, our new or not-so-new-any-longer chieftain leaves much to desire.)
For this process, our European neighbours coined the expression “unification”, while the Germans themselves insist to call it “RE-unification”. For obvious motives. We are one people, after all, aren’t we? Don’t you believe it. We are NOT.
What Easterners think of Westerners is: they haven’t got any values but money. They pretend that they know all and everything, and particularly that they know all and everything better. They won’t take into account that not everything was bad in communist times.
What Westerners think of Easterners is: They lack initiative. They are not accustomed to work efficiently so that we’ll have to pay for them in all eternity. And everything WAS bad in communist times after all. Just look at those cars.
So, if you really come to Germany, make sure you know beforehand which half the town you’re going to visit once belonged to. Might save you embarassing situations.

3. Food&Drink
First lesson: forget about Sauerkraut. It is being eaten, to be sure, but its role in German cooking is adequately described with the nice word “marginal”. Actually, few restaurants will serve it. Sauerkraut dishes take far too much time to prepare, and the amount of calories they contain (Sauerkraut usually being served with heaps of sausages and fat pork) is not exactly what you should choose for your daily diet unless you are working 12 hours daily carrying stones in a quarry. So, intellectuals will eventually scorn Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut in Germany, that is – once they’ll have crossed the border to spend a weekend in Alsace, they’ll happily order Sauerkraut dishes with heaps of sausages and fat pork and end up singing hymns on the sublimeness of French cuisine.

Third Lesson: German beer is not. The diversity of trade marks will not fail to impress you. (It is diminishing, though.) And there are regional differences as well. If you are a beer addict, Bavaria will be your paradise. There, one litre (roughly two pints) is a perfectly normal quantity to order. It is the normal measure, THE measure. That why it’s called “MASS” (“Measure”). To be precise, DIE MASS (feminine gender), whereas MASS as “measure” without any connection with beer is DAS MASS (neutre). But don’t worry about the bewildering intricacies of German grammar. Some years ago, the president of the liberal party, while inaugurating the Munich october feast, got his DIE MASS and DAS MASS mixed up as well, and that’s probably the reason why liberals will have no chance to join the Bavarian government for decades to come.