Today’s post is a little tribute to one of the great parties the world has ever known: The Love Parade. Three years ago today, a crowd surge led to 21 deaths and 500 injuries at the last gathering in Duisburg, Germany, and the party would be forever canceled.

Starting with a gathering of just 150 in Berlin in 1989 to celebrate love through music, the Love Parade was usually held in the capital (but occasionally other cities) and became one of the biggest and most unique electronic music festivals and parades in the world. Called “the greatest amateur circus on earth” due to the images of people sitting and dancing on streetlamps, trees, signs, telephone booths and whatever other obstacles may be in their way, the once-a-year gathering consistently attracted more than one million people, with a peak of 1.6 million in Dortmund in 2008.

While we may never see an annual party like this again, the party spirit of Germans in general, and particularly Berliners, is still alive and well. And in addition to the memories, the Love Parade left us with one of the great all-time logo designs in the world, below:

A German footballer carrying the national expression…

Germans are not a cold, stone-faced people. They just like to make you think that. If you can fend off intimidation and get past that gruff, stoic exterior, you’re likely to find a warm-hearted, friendly person inside.

When I first started spending time here, I’ll never forget my friend’s exact quote about her kinfolk: “Germans mostly have a stressed expression on their face. That’s what gives us a hard time when we go on vacation and meet people who really enjoy life; we have to come back and get used to the ‘unfriendliness’ again.”

Of course she didn’t mean unfriendly, just the outward shell that people here seem pre-wired to carry with them. Being stoic and shortspoken doesn’t mean one doesn’t enjoy life, and given the consumption habits of the typical German, I’d venture to say that most people here actually enjoy it quite a lot. Just don’t go walking around with a big grin on your face if you hope to fit in…

If you’re hungry or thirsty in Germany, well, you don’t have much of a choice. You drink beer. You eat sausage. And that’s just how it is.

Sure, German cuisine has started to become adventurous with the influx of immigrants—particularly evident in the prevalence of currywurst and doner kebab shops—but this is a national diet that has and always will be built firmly on the staples: beer and sausage.

The average German gulps down 116 liters (or 31 gallons) of beer every year, and consumes more than 60 pounds (27 kilos) of sausage. While there are 1500 varieties of sausage produced in Germany (who would have guessed there were so many different ways to put meat in a thin casing?), the heavy hitters here include wurstchen, or tiny cocktail-like sausages often used as snacks or appetizers, and bratwurst, a heartier meal staple. Salami cold cuts are also huge here, often as a part of breakfast.

On the beverage side of things, Germans are masters of the craft of brewing. The home of a huge variety of beers—alt, bock, dunkel, kölsch, lager, malzbier, pils and weizenbier—it is no surprise that beer is often cheaper than water here. It’s perfectly normal to see some brands of beer sold in supermarkets for just a few cents a bottle.

So eat well and drink heartily while you’re here—just make sure you learn to like sausage and beer.

Beer at 39 cents a bottle

Types of sausage on the menu

A “fancy” dinner

Kegs….kegs….kegs

Currywurst

Germans are earth-conscious. They recycle…a lot. And that’s good. What’s not so good, however, is the process of figuring out exactly how to abide by the strict recycling guidelines if you aren’t from here.

Being one of the world’s pioneers in recycling, Germans have it down to a science—evident in the many colors of bins you’ll see for recycling throughout any city you walk through. One for plastic, one for metal, one for tin, one for a different kind of plastic, one for green-tinted glass, one for yellow-brown tinted glass, one for clear glass, one for paper, one for…it can be quite a confusing ordeal. And with the army of recycling men running around collecting and managing these things, not to mention the “observant” locals not-so-subtly shaking their head at your ignorance as you make your bin selection, quite an intimidating one too!

Make sure you know what goes where…

And don’t let the size intimidate you!

And that’s just at the park. Let’s not forget the refund machines in many supermarkets that collect certain types of glass bottles for some money back. You have to look for a particular logo on your bottle, and if it’s not there, no matter how much all the glass may seem alike, you won’t get your 50 cents for it. But more importantly, you’ll draw the ire of the people lined up behind you, who just lugged 10 kilos worth of bottles to the store to walk away with their euros!

Try to navigate the instructions…’

Put the bottle in…

And collect your cash!

I’m glad the Germans are this way—we should all learn from their example. But perhaps a tutorial on the flight over would make life a little easier for all of us :).

Even their clothes donation bins can be intimidating!

Germans are sticklers for time. This, you can tell, by the prevalence of clocks everywhere. No matter where you walk, it’s likely you’ll see a clock proudly displaying its hands as if to say: “Be on time!” This is a mantra Germans live by, except, of course, when they don’t.

Never Far from a Clock in Germany

See, the whole idea you may have about Germans and timeliness is likely to be shattered within a few days of being here. Culturally, it’s safe to say that people still generally keep appointments punctual; if it’s a business meeting, this is especially important. But unlike Japan, where people are on time but so are trains and other services, Germany hasn’t quite followed suit.

I’ve taken Deutsche Bahn trains several times to connect between cities here, and I don’t think I’ve arrived at my scheduled time yet. Granted, it’s not likely you’ll get to your destination too late—delays of 20 or 30 minutes are the norm—but it was certainly counter to what I expected upon arriving here. In the case of the trains, a comedy of errors have been the culprit for DB in recent years, ranging from axel problems to lax track maintenance to disgruntled employees.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not advising you to come here and ignore any concept of punctuality. I just think that it’s about time Germans reconsider the seemingly national sense of pride they display in regards to timeliness, as these days it is more myth than reality.

Friendly Frankfurt Airport Reminders

My ID:  5:23pm, Monday, 03 June 2002; just north of Bingen

A familiar sight around Germany

I am some three hours into my German experience, on a train from Koln to Frankfurt, where I will begin my experience of this country. I’ve been trailing the mighty Rhine River pretty much since I first crossed the border from the Netherlands. Already, the beautiful, steep, rocky hills sharply bowing down to the wide, windy, barge-packed river, adorned by towns on both sides resting comfortably in the river valley full of steeples and an occasional old castle built into the side or at the top of a mountain, are etched in my memory.

Introduced to Germany via the rails

I’ve heard Germans are timely, and my train connection in Koln was exactly that. And businesslike, too—everyone seems to be in a hurry. Even in the train station, there didn’t seem to be many people gathering, talking, laughing…just everyone going about their business. And while the Rhine River valley continues to wow me with its beauty, I am glad that I didn’t choose to study German in school—what an ugly sounding language!

(Note: I apologize about this, my German friends! But this is supposed to be a real, unfiltered account of first impressions, and this excerpt is straight out of the journal I kept from my first experiences in Europe in 2002!)

Approaching Koln

Easy connection in Koln