Germans Do What?

...on a hilly street in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

We'll find out Sunday if Germany will win the 2014 World Cup, but Germans are already winners in so many ways.

Although they eat substantial food (Nothing light and airy about German dishes.) plentifully served in restaurants and tantalizingly displayed in bakeries, the population exercises away any excess calories.

Find the most remote mountain top, where there are probably animal species yet to be discovered by man, and I guarantee you'll find a German hiking the path.  Of course, you will also find hikers, poles firmly in hand,  navigating city streets from store to store.  Never have David and I seen so many people on the move.

When hiking becomes boring, Germans take to their bikes.  There are almost as many bikes on the road as cars, and innumerable special paths wend their way through lush countryside.  Age is irrelevant--teenagers, seniors with gray hair and trifocals, and entire families with toddlers strapped on back seats believe in pedal power.

When Germans aren't eating or exercising, they must be raising flowers because we've seldom seen so many.  Blooms decorate houses, climb around doorways, and even grow in former horse water troughs.

Germans are so clever they're even raising a new crop no one else has ever heard of!  We saw solar panels on almost every roof top, and there are entire fenced fields stretching for a half mile or more devoted to nothing but row after row of solar power.  Germans will undoubtedly be ready when the government, spooked by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, closes the last nuclear power plant at the end of 2015.

But for all they do right, they get three things wrong.  Don't bother waiting for the water to warm up in public restrooms anywhere in Germany--it never will.  Only cold water is available.

Try any of the German pastries for a taste treat, but avoid the schneeballen.  It looks delicious and tastes forgettable.  It's simply pie dough that's been sliced, jumbled and then fried.  Even dusting with confectioner's sugar doesn't help.

Asking for plain tap water with a meal is often futile.  The waiter will want to sell, for almost $5, bottled mineral or gas water, so persistence is required to get what you want.  Even then, persistence doesn't always work.  A waitress in a charming little inn in Rothernburg told me they had no water.  David and I wondered how they washed dishes, but we knew better than to ask.

Flowers seem to sprout and grow everywhere in Germany.

Still, if you praise German soccer, carry your own water and don't run over any hikers or bikers, you will enjoy your time in Germany.  It is a beautiful country full of flowers, bucolic villages, soaring mountains and sapphire lakes dotted with white sailboats.  Are David and I ready to go back?  Jawohl!