Germany Blog

Stories, tips, and reflections about life, travel, and culture in Germany.

  • Best Of The New Year 2010 To You!

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    Greetings on this first day of 2010! I hope that your New Year’s Eve celebrations went well — I trust that you are not reading this first thing in the morning! ;-)

    Like most of the other peoples of the world, this morning finds Germans waking up a bit worn out from the night before. Even if you only stayed home and watched Dinner For One, our traditional New Year’s Eve programming here in Germany, it is easy to be tired by setting the work of the old year aside.

    For those of us who went out for a St. Silvester’s party or attended a fireworks show, well, thank goodness for coffee! ;-)

    Of course, New Year’s Day is not all about recovering from New Year’s Eve. This is also the traditional day in Germany to say Thank You to the people who have served you throughout the past year. Small gifts for business partners, the newspaper delivery boy, your grocer, or the doorman at your building are customarily given on this day.

    Many people also set their Neujahrsvorsätze, or New Year’s Resolutions. These are popular in Germany although not quite as institutionalized as a practice like they are in the U.S. or Great Britain.

    Still, setting goals or making wishes for the year ahead is much talked about here, even if we know that the majority has no intention of following through on resolutions to eat right, lose weight, or give up one’s favorite time wasting hobbies ;-)

    As for me, my Neujahrsvorsätze for MyGermanCity.com is to keep developing this site into an entertaining and informative portal for all things related to Germany.

    In the year ahead, you will see more webcams, maps, and finally the photo galleries to give you an even closer look at what’s going on “now and then” in Germany. Also look forward for more developments of the Community area (whose gates will hopefully opened in 2010).

    Until then, however, enjoy this day and the things here now. Make some Neujahrsvorsätze of your own regarding Germany, research them on MyGermanCity.com, and, of course, let me know what you miss.

    I look forward to hearing from you as you achieve your resolutions.

    All the best for you and yours,
    Marcus

  • Merry Christmas 2009!

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    Christmas is upon us at last!

    Here in Germany the snow is on the ground, making the white lights of the German Christmas Markets really twinkle and shine. I luckily and gratefully enjoyed them in person here in Berlin, by the way.

    Of course, on Christmas Day we will all be together for a big meal and the exchanging of presents. The day after Christmas I’ll be around visiting close friends and other family members. I traveled a lot this year, so I have a bunch of stories to share and people to catch up with before the year is through.

    Wherever you are, I wanted to take a few minutes this day to wish you the very best of the holiday season. Whether you will be celebrating Christmas in Germany or another corner of the world, I want you to feel the warmth of the German holiday season. Even for those who celebrate for purely secular reasons, it is a truly magical time of the year.

    There are carolers and live music performances all over the country. Some of the carols that are shared I’ve collected here so that you can listen as well (links open in a new window):

    You may be able to catch some of these performances live, of course, via the webcams that are over the Christmas markets. I don’t have webcams for every town in Germany yet, but several of the bigger markets are covered, with more added all the time (including you, thank you!).

    You can watch the markets via webcams in Dresden, Munich, and Berlin from several different parts of the city.

    Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

    —Marcus

  • Hug A Tree For Good Luck On Thomasnacht

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    You know from reading about recycling in Germany that we Germans care deeply for the environment. However, on Thomasnacht, when you see someone hugging a tree, they’re not doing it because they love Mother Nature. OK, they probably do, but… they’re mainly doing it for good luck.

    Hugging trees for good luck is just one of many traditions that are celebrated around Thomasnacht (this very night from December 20th to 21st), which usually coincides with the Winter Solstice.

    Another tradition is baking Kletzenbrot, which is a kind of fruit cake with lots of dried pears and raisins. Unmarried women can also toss shoes over their shoulders, and if the toes land pointing out, they will marry in the next year, as Thomasnacht is supposed to be a good night for predicting the future.

    Of course, you don’t have to stay in trying to guess what’s going to happen to you in the year ahead. Instead, you can go out and have a good time at one of the Thomasnacht parties being held around Germany. Rüdesheim am Rhein plays host to a particularly well-developed party for this special day.

    The Rüdesheim town association puts on the Thomasnacht party, which includes special drinks, pageants, and presentations. Locals dress in historical costumes and reenact scenes from the town’s history, while performers do street theater based on tales from the Brothers Grimm. There is even a special cruise down the Rhine with live classical music.

    While the occasion is certainly festive, community events like these also serve as a way to get more people to come out to the Christmas markets. Since most of the shops close up on the 24th for the season, Thomasnacht also serves as a last hurrah for gift buyers and those looking to get souvenirs from the markets (including me ;-).

    Thus, whether you just want a night out or you are trying to pick up a bit of good luck by hugging a tree, don’t neglect to take advantage of the peaking of the festive spirits around Thomasnacht! ;-)

    —Marcus

  • Do You Know How To Recycle In Germany?

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    Germany is a world leader in recycling. Although the country produces more than 30 millions tons of garbage every year, we have an advanced recycling collection system to avoid waste piles. Some waste is even burned at special facilities that provide steam energy to create electric power for our cities.

    Understanding how to recycle in Germany is something locals have learned over time. We separate our trash instinctively and enthusiastically.

    There are even reports of German soldiers in Afghanistan habitually separating their waste, despite the lack of a formal system.

    It’s simply the German way. ;-)

    How The German Recycling System Works

    For newcomers, recycling in Germany takes a bit of getting used to!

    To begin, unlike many other developed nations, Germany doesn’t have one single recycling bin. Typically, there are at least four bins. Each color manages a different kind of waste, and the bins are supplemented by other collection programs for glass, batteries, and miscellaneous goods.

    Brown Bins

    Brown bins are for biological waste. This includes kitchen scraps and garden clippings. Other items that go in the brown bin are coffee filters, tea bags (without the paper tag), feathers, sawdust, and hair.

    Blue Bins

    Blue bins are for paper and cardboard. In some ways, this is the easiest one! All of your papers, boxes, tea tags, and magazines go here, although you should remember to flatten boxes first and to throw in dry paper only.

    Yellow Bins

    Yellow bins are for plastics and metals — often also represented by the Der grüne Punkt sign (a round circle with two arrows pointing to each other). Plastic wrap, food cans, yogurt cups, shopping bags, and soap bottles go here.

    They do ask that you rinse items before putting them into this bin (remember my “enthusiastically” note in the first paragraph? ;-).

    Gray Bins

    Gray bins are for household waste a.k.a. Restmüll. Light bulbs (the old models), diapers, tissues, cigarette butts, and photographs are some of the things that go here. Also these items are burned when collected.

    Glass and Batteries

    Glass bottles and batteries are recycled publicly. You will see large bins for glass recycling in most public places. It is separated by color, always.

    Batteries are collected at supermarkets and shopping malls.

    Sperrmüll

    In Germany, we also have Sperrmüll, which refers to miscellaneous items. Typically, Sperrmüll days will be announced as a time when municipal trucks will come around for all of the other things you want to have thrown away, like broken furniture, old lamps, or sofas. You place it on the curb outside of your house.

    Sounds like it is heading for the landfill, right? Wrong! Second-hand goods dealers, junk collectors, and enterprising locals often collect the Sperrmüll long before anyone from the city arrives to get it. No sense letting something that can be used again be thrown away by your neighbors! ;-)

    —Marcus

  • Stollen — The German Holiday Cake Everyone Seems To Adore

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    Even though I travel quite a bit, I can always count on being able to get a taste of Germany abroad during the holiday season. There is one kind of German Christmas cake in particular that people the world over seem to adore. It may be cliche, but I love that bakers everywhere, of all nationalities, are making Stollen cake this month.

    Also known as Christstollen, it’s a very rich cake — you may want to eat it with a dark coffee on the side to balance the sweetness. There’s butter, cream, sugar, raisins, spices, and a strong dash of brandy or rum. (Regionally there’s also marzipan in the middle.) The top is covered with a grainy white sugar icing, and I can never stop with just one piece! ;-)

    Neither can most Germans — Stollen is addictively good. This is one of the reasons that bakeries all over the world bring it out at the holidays. Baked in long, low loaves, it is sure to have customers clamoring for more.

    As a result of its popularity, Stollen even has its own festival! Hosted in Dresden at the Striezelmarkt (Dresden’s Christmas Market on Altmarkt) the Saturday prior the second Advent, the highlight of the Stollenfest is the baking of a giant Stollen cake. The locals are honoring the effort of August the Strong, who once ordered a 1.8 ton Stollen cake!

    This was back in 1730, and I’ve no idea how his baker managed. For years, no one else tried, but gradually curiosity got the better of the locals. In 1994, the organizers of Dresden’s Christmas markets decided to bring the tradition back, and have been baking giant Stollen cakes each year since then.

    The average “uber cake” now has 44 liters of Jamaican rum and weighs in at between three and four tons. Cut with a four foot (1.2 meter) silver knife by the Royal Master Baker, 500 gram pieces of the festival cake are then sold to attendees for about 3 Euro. With an average of 700,000 people turning out each year to enjoy the festival, it’s a good thing the cake is so large so that everyone can get a piece!

    If you can’t make the festival, and your local baker doesn’t have any Stollen, you can also order it online from a number of traditional bakers, including the American based Dresden Stollen bakery.

    However you manage, be sure you get a taste of Stollen this season, so you can see why so many people — including me, of course — adore this wonderful holiday cake. :-)

    —Marcus