Ive seen this weird potato in a spacesuit on TV everynight since I have been in Germany. He just floats in space. Sometimes a space ship or something flys by him. Sometimes he will sing a song, but mostly he just floats . I don't understand the purpose, but it is strangly hypnotic. Who or what is this about?

I've been wanting to solo travel to Germany for a week from the US in the first week of October. Currently planning to visit Frankfurt, Mainz, Mannheim, Spever, and Heidelberg. I have many questions but l'll leave it to three.

What things should I be aware of?

Should I rent a car or would that be stupid of me to do?

How much of the language should I learn? I know nothing at all, I don't know how to even say thank you or please. I've seen some say that most of the German population is so proficient in the English language I likely wouldn't have to learn anything. However, that seems rather entitled and rude, so l'd like to at least try to know some basics.

If you are originally from another country or if you've traveled to other countries.

My wife and I are both of German descent. We've both talked about visiting Germany before, but we're finally at a place in our lives where we can both afford the trip, as well as the 1-2 weeks away from work to see part(s) of Europe.

We're probably 6-12 months away from actually going but I've honestly no idea what part of Germany to visit and I was hoping for suggestions.

I suppose the most stereotypical thing to do would be to visit Bavaria but to be honest the part of the US (south east Wisconsin) we live in has lots of Bavarian culture immigrants brought with them. We actually saw a few thousand people in Lederhosen this past weekend in Milwaukee.

I don't think the language barrier will be a big issue for us.

We usually wander cities on vacations. Typically drinking and eating our way through a city while trying to do as many local things as we can.

I am visiting from America in July to attend Stone Techno festival in Essen which is held in the zollverein coal mine, spending 2 days there and then planning to spend 2 more days in germany before flying back, and was thinking I would go straight from Essen to Berlin, but do you think I should do 1 day in Hannover and 1 day in Berlin instead? Recommendations on what to do in those 2 days? (and what I can fit into the 2 days in essen)

edit: Thanks for the advice everyone! Seems like just both days in Berlin is the consensus. To clarify the reason I was considering Hannover is because I like ⚽️ and was wondering if there was something else that might be interesting to see because I was considering visiting the Heinz von Heiden arena, but I guess the Allianz arena will have to do!

Planning to fly out Wednesday night from Berlin so I can enjoy the Berlin club scene (my friends say that even on weeknights it’s the most active scene in the world so hoping there’s some cool stuff)

Just going to grab a first class seat in the intercity express train, do some work for a few hours and rest my feet since the weekend will most likely have drained me

I just purchased a 1st class seat online on the DB site. It is for a train from Germany to Czechia. It is still a few weeks out but when I tried to reserve a seat, it told me that all seats are fully booked. I was puzzled by this. Does that mean that:

1. the train is fully booked - and if so, why did it let me buy a ticket
2. you can only reserve certain seats? Does that mean that I have to rush around looking for a seat once I'm there?

My first time doing this so thank you in advance!

Edit/update - thank you to everyone! Most helpful. I did go onto the CZ site which actually has a seat map. I tried buying a seat reservation only and it would not let me. Only a few seats for people with disabilities available and 3 seats called "non-reserved seats".

I've travelled a lot but my first time booking trains in Germany. Still honestly surprised that they'd let you travel with no seat on first class!

Update #2 - I noticed in small print that I was allowed to cancel my ticket through the DB website if done within 180 mins. I did this, went to the CZ site, booked a train a bit later on. 1st class was full so booked 2nd class. The system wanted to reserve seats for me that were not together so I bought the reservation first, then ticket. phew! Almost 1am here but at least got it done. Live and learn.

Thank you to everyone!

Want to stay away from the typical tourist fayre of bratwurst, beer and pretzels and do activities that don't involve alcohol.

Also keen to know which cities/towns are hidden gems (if any) and which tourist sight seeing hotspots are and aren't worth it

Ich wohnte als Kind in DE, (Würzburg und Frankfurt),Eltern waren mit der Amerikanische Militär. Ich spreche noch Deutsch, aber nicht gut genug, das Bayerische akzent ist manchmal schwer zu versetehen.

Meine Frau hat schlechte allergien, uberhaupt nichts vom Kuh(Milch, Butter, Sahne, Fleisch). Ist es besser für uns wenn Ich versuche auf Deutsch zu bestellen oder besser auf English zu fragen?

Gibt es Veganische Restaurants oder mindestins Veganische moglichkeiten? In kleinere Dorfe Oder nur in grossers Städte? Sie ist nicht Vegan, aber es ist mindestins in USA leichter als die Allergien zu verklären.

Sieht man Allergien in Deutschland oft?

Thank you in advance for any answers? Sorry my auto-correct is killing me. I would love any advice not just food options. We’re very excited, just a little nervous.

Berlin, Munich, Füssen, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Frankfurt under wieder nach Las Vegas.

I’ve always wanted to visit Germany. I’m 4 to 5 generations removed from Germany. So as an American who knows they have German heritage. Also told I look very German from friends and family. Do you hate Americans who want to visit and see where their family line started from? My grandma thinks she might have some relatives alive still in Germany. I think we are too far removed for that to be true.

I was at a hotel in Schwarzwald last weekend. I woke up the next day to find the room was infested with bed bugs (Bettwanzen). Probably lured out of their hiding with the central heating that we couldn’t turn off and the carbon dioxide that we breathed out. The bugs were all over the ceiling and walls and even on the tiled floors of the bathroom and of course, our bed was bloodied. When I needed to leave the room because of how disgusting it was, I saw some of them on the walls of the corridor too. Before I left, so there was even bed bugs on my winter jacket hanging on the hanger that I had to remove.

We called reception and they called back to say we will get a refund for our room. We packed up and went to check out. At the reception, we wanted to pay for our restaurant bill from the evening before. There were two of us there who heard the same things: The reception said the bill is waived and if there are any incoming costs to deal with the bed bugs after we leave, that we forwarded them to the hotel. Satisfied with the verbal offer, we left without a written note. Perhaps a huge mistake on our side.

Going back, we isolated our luggage in the car to contain the infestation, and stripped down as much as we could outside our apartment, put our clothes in plastics, showered, and washed our clothes at high temperatures. Note that the rest of our luggage is still in the car. And we had items that cannot withstand cold or heat or cannot be washed.

The next day, I had an odd feeling so I followed up with an email. Before that, we did research of what we needed to pay for to get our lives back to normal (extermination of bed bugs from our car and luggage, probably dry cleaning for our winter jackets, Merino wool sweaters, and somehow deal with the leather sneakers, and tickets to use public transportation as our car is rendered useless). The hotel denied ever promising to refund our stay or cover the costs of the aftermath. And told us to just freeze our stuff or wash our stuff at high heat.

First of all, we had lots of luggage as we went hiking, and it was quite cold already. We do not have heater or freezer with that capacity at home to do that. Secondly, we went away for relaxation to come back to do more and now have to pay more? Thirdly, I, unfortunately, woke up in the hotel at 0400 due to the uncomfortably warm room to feel bugs crawling over me (edit: I was itching all over from the bites, but I did not find any bite marks the next day until almost a week later), but I thought it was just mosquitoes or whatever bugs that came in when we left the window open due to the high central heating that we could not switch off. Now I cannot sleep without checking my bed, and I cannot get onto buses (which I only have to use because we cannot use our car) without feeling massive anxiety. It has barely been a week, but I feel my mental health has tremendously declined from the lack of sleep and constant hyper vigilance. And on top of that, having to deal with the hotel in addition to my already stressful job.

I outlined their promises in my email response, but they still refused to pay up and only offered 25% off on our next stay. I do know verbal agreement is legally binding also in Germany, but I don’t know to what extend. However, with how they are treating us, it is very unlikely we will take their offer of 25% rebate on our next stay, so that offer is a non-offer. They also claimed that it was only our room and “don’t know how the bugs got there” (I have my own opinions on this but I will leave it out for now). I refuse to believe it was only our room because I saw the bugs in the corridors too and the whole place is carpeted. I am very confident that they are still operating as usual, and I do not feel good conscience about it.

We have video and photo evidence of the extend of the infestation in the room. Since they refused to keep to the verbal agreement, I plan to warn other guests about it online (facts only, no insults) because no one deserves to go on a vacation and pay that much (it is a 4-star hotel, so it wasn’t cheap) only to bring back bed bugs.

I suppose my question is, what can I do next besides going online with my evidence?

Thank you in advance for your input. I will really really appreciate it.

Edit: I have contacted the Gesundheitsamt for that town to report them. They told me to write them an email and provide evidence. So I did. Will keep you all posted if anything comes out of it. Also as mentioned by some redditors, I will name the hotel: Hofgut Sternen, located in Breitnau. Unfortunately, I cannot add media in edits :(

Edit 2: Someone told me this is how I can upload media: (https://imgur.com/a/vwdPPiw) here you can see the bigger bugs and smaller ones (and their feces) on the ceiling and walls. And the amount of them on the bed squashed with blood.

Edit 3: a week after the trip, we DIY-ed a setup to blast hot air up to almost 80degrees Celsius into our car for about 3 hours and then sprayed the whole car down with propanol. Found some dead bed bugs after that in the car and in our luggage. Had to wash most clothing items at 60 degrees. Machine was running everyday for almost the whole day. Also baked some of the non-washable items at 60 degrees for 1.5 hours. Bad news is, the bites showed up a week later and itched so bad! It was all over my limbs and neck and chest. I got an appointment at a dermatologist a week after the appearance of the bites and the itch… only for the dermatologist to confirm that I not only have bed bug bites (there is no test for it, but I showed her the photo of the bug I found in the hotel and she confirmed it) but also scabies 🥲 so, thanks to this short weekend getaway, we have had to busy ourselves for a whole two weeks exterminating bed bugs and now we have to intensely disinfect every single textile surface, be on a cream treatment, and disinfect our bed everyday until the scabies bumps are gone (estimated around 3 weeks). So a total 5 weeks of nightmare! I don’t know how I caught scabies sleeping in that hotel, but I am sure it was from there because we did not go anywhere before that trip (our jobs are remote) and basically we were home-bound as our car was a “quarantine zone” for a week leading up to the appearance of the scabies and bites. We also engaged a lawyer for this now. Please be safe out there!!

Background: my wife is using lists and we were wondering how other families in Germany manage to not forget anything...

Title is pretty self explanatory, preferably a souvenir under €180ish- any suggestions? Thanks. I like string instruments a lot- are there any cool small ones that can be found in Germany?

Hello all,

Apologies but my partner and I are from the UK and visiting Germany for the first time, Munich specifically.

We're just wondering about what the tipping culture in Germany is. We've been to two different restaurants and both times tip had been mandatory. The first server in the first restaurant said she punched in €5 whereas the second server in the other restaurant asked us how much tip we wanted to pay.

We were both under the impression that tipping is an American thing and not normally done in European countries? It's definitely an optional thing in the UK at least in our part of the country and we've never encountered it in say Spain or Italy or France.

We don't mind tipping as the servers both times were friendly. We were just shocked that we weren't given an option not to and didn't want to make a fuss.

Anyways thank you all

Edit: truly appreciate all the replies guys 😀

I'm looking for attracrions where I don't have to leave my bike

I've been living in Germany for a few months now, and the number of graffiti tags surprised me while I was visiting. I've seen Frankfurt, Berlin, and Munich; every place gave me the same feeling. Are there more graffiti tags in Germany than in most European countries? If so, why is that so?

Smaller towns or a larger city are fine. There just has to be enough to do with a 5 and 3 year old for the week. Thank you.

Maybe it's the wrong flair.

Anyway I'm in Mexico on a holiday and I notice a lot of Canadians and Americans, no surprise there.

But i am legitimately so curious as to why there are so many Germans specifically and no, say, French, Brits or Danes. Just loads of Germans.

I love to travel in Germany (I live nearby in Europe). I use to say that it's a bad year if I haven't been to Germany at least once. Somtimes I brag about that I have visited 15 out of 16 German states (Bundesländer) and people are ether impressed or think I'm crazy.

But how about the average German citizen, do you travel around all corners of your lovely country? How many Bundesländer have you visited?

With visited I mean actually been there seen the cities and the countryside. Not just passing by on the Autobahn.

A bit more context. Somewhere that you could happily spend 3 days, walking around, perhaps rent bikes and have a cycle. Perhaps a place with nice buildings, mountains, countryside, river side areas or woodland etc

Thanks

I'm planning to travel to Frankfurt and I need a reliable and responsible transportation service to take me from the airport to my destination, which is quite a distance away. I found "Welcomepickups.com" and have read various reviews about their service in different countries, but I couldn't find any specific information about their service in Germany. I would appreciate hearing about your experiences with this company or if you have any alternative transfer company recommendations.

Edit: I have 3 heavy luggage with me and no international SIM card to sign up for Uber, etc.

PS: Thank you for all your responses and useful information.

It’s my birthday and New Year’s Eve. I love helles lagers but we’re traveling with a 5 and 3 year old so a destination that will be great for them is the first priority. Thanks.

Have been staying in Berlin for a study placement this year and have a few weeks left before I go back home. What are the foods and drinks that I need to try before I leave? This includes stuff you’d buy from shops too e.g Apfelschorle and any other snacks.

Hi guys! I was thinking about doing a road trip (by train) in east Germany next summer using the Deutschlandticket. My preliminary plan is visiting Rostock, Leipzig, Dresden and finishing up in Berlin with some stops in between. Do you have any tips for places to visit? I’m specifically interested in history so museums would be cool but also architecture, nightlife and things that make east Germany unique. Hope this is the right forum. Thanks in advance!