As a German, can you name 5 things you love about your country?

 

Chris Ebbert

Updated 

1. The density of historic towns and cities. You are so heavily surrounded by history and old buildings in great shape, it can make your head spin. We don’t even look at a little chapel or old house when we drive past, but the same building would be a major attraction and featured in tourist guides in other places, like Canada or New Zealand, where buildings 500+ years old just don’t feature.
2. The beer. There are crazy many brands, and the best bit is that they are brewed according to the Purity Law from 1516. So, no funny stuff inside. When we try beers that were brewed elsewhere, we consider them more as a kind of “barley lemonade.” Real beer is chemical free.
3. The door handles and bathroom armatures. German handles are so much more solid, wobble-free, and satisfyingly weighted to operate. It is a joy to flush a German toilet.
4. How interesting the people are to talk to. There does not seem to be a single, boring German. Everyone is charged all the way with an intense sense of individual pursuits, and these tend to be big challenges—like reading the Mahabharata in the original, climbing Mount Everest, or finding one’s shamanic spirit guide animal.
5. The no-hype attitude. Germans like to keep it factual, and roll their eyes quickly at a very low threshold of overly flowery descriptions of anything. You are in the company of some very down-to-earth people, even while they may be holding forth on the descriptions of aircraft in the Mahabharata.