history, Berlin is a must. I've been there twice in recent years and loved it on both occasions - plenty to do, a fascinating city. Go and see the Olympic stadium and have a wander around the great main railway station, stay in the old Eastern half of the city - Prenzlauer Berg area where it's slightly cheaper and good selection of bars and restaurants. The locals are friendly and speak English better than we do which is pretty handy if you are as useless at learning languages as I am. Weirdest sight seen - guy dressed up as East German border guard standing by the remains of the wall in Potsdam Square - read The File by Timothy Garton-Ash - and you truly understand the human consequences of the divided city.

As someone who generally goes abroad for two reasons (dark tourism and football), Germany does both very well. In the former camp, Hohenschönhausen (the Stasi prison) in Berlin is absolutely chilling, while Borussia Dortmund's ground has the best atmosphere in Europe, IMHO.

I quite like Germany. I've been to Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg, all huge and diverse. Germany is a such a big place, one forgets.

Definitely worth a visit. Start with Berlin. Sprawling, east meets west, east is best.

and can only echo those sentiments above. I love it as a city. It has so much culture / art and history that you're spoilt for choice. Their English is far better than my (poor) German.
Give me Berlin over Paris any day.

And has fantastic weather in summer btw.

for 15 years from 1979 to 1994, and was there when the Wall came down, and for Unification the year after. I preferred Berlin before the fall of the Wall, but that was 20 years ago, and I expect it's got it's act together again. I like Germany and the Germans, and I enjoyed my time there. We have more in common with them than the French. How could we not? Our Royal family has German roots going back for the past 200 years. As stated above, it's a big country, so where to go and what to see is very varied. if you like nature, the Black Forest and the Bavarian Alps. If you like kultur, Berlin East and West, and Dresden. If you want to see how Christmas can be both commercialised and acceptable, any large town or city at this time of the year for the Christmas markets. And don't forget the beer!

and I like the French.

I like most people. It's the general public I can't stand. :)

I've been to Germany a few times on business (never on holiday) and have always been welcomed by any Germans I've met. The bars are great and so is the local food and they do have fantastic wines that you just don't get in the UK. In my younger days I particularly became impressed by the high standard of stunningly attractive and confident German women I would strike up conversations with in bars who would easily detect that my intentions were purely conversational. What I mean is that there was a parity in the exchanges based on common interest without any sexual implication. I struggle to remember being able to do that quite so easily in UK pubs/bars where the default setting seems to be "he's trying to chat me up".

On the whole I think Germans temperamentally are more like the English in many ways. They perhaps have a more homegenised view of what makes them German than we do of what makes us English (I don't include the Celts in this as they always, in my experience, have had a greater sense of what makes them Welsh, Irish and Scots) and this is probably a reflection of the English mongrel heritage.

I think Germans set themselves very high standards compared to other nationalities which sometimes is perceived as arrogance but is in many respects just a feature of their strong cultural identity.

here thanks keep them coming.

Kraftwerk; beer; sausages; in that order.

It's a great country, with some pretty diverse areas and cities. This may be the result of the fact that for so long it was a bunch of city states rather than a unified country.

Munich's a great visit - musuems, art galleries, brauhauses, the lot. Cologne as well - what a cathedral. And Nuerenberg.

What with the British media's obsession with it, the slant of history teaching in our schools and, to be fair, the significance of the conflict it's difficult to ignore the WW2 angle on a visit to Germany; but there's so much more to the country. It must have been something else in the Middle Ages.

and would reinforce some of that already mentioned above. Beer from the Brauhaus is good, the old town in Dusseldorf I loved, the Baltic coast, inland lakes such as Biggesee, the scenery of the Eifel and the Sauerland regions, the Mosel Valley and Trier, Hamburg - what a night out (plan for all night), and you could then go south.

I can thoroughly recommend Hamburg, where I spent my ‘year abroad’ as a student. It’s got all the cultural stuff you’d expect from a major city (art galleries, theatres, etc), two very different football teams (I can highly recommend a St Pauli home game), a fascinating old dock area - and there’s a dirty great lake in the middle of the city, the Alster, which means lots of lovely views and plenty of fresh air.

While we’re in the north of the country, Bremen, Kiel and Lübeck are all lovely too. I keep meaning to go back and explore the German coast properly. There are supposed to be some fascinating resorts in the formerly Communist bit.

Went to Berlin with the family for a week a couple of years ago. Very family friendly, and we absolutely loved the place. The Russian war cemetery at Treptower park is an awseome sight particularly the huge (and I mean HUGE)statue of a Red army soldier cradling a child and crushing a swastika underfoot.

Germany has a thriving music scene with a huge number of groups for those of us happy souls inclined to goth/darkwave/EBM/industrial: off the top of my head there's Blutengel, Project Pitchfork, Diary of Dreams, Lacrimosa, and, of course, the mighty Rammstein. They and their ilk sell like hot cakes, and Germany still has alternative music charts to keep track of such things.

Germans are simply mad about music, and if you ever go to Berlin you must check out Saturn on Friedrichstrasse, an enormous CD store that, if I remember correctly, puts also-rans like the HMV Megastore in Oxford Street to shame.

Despite the stereotypes, German humour is actually pretty good, if something of an acquired taste as, from my experience, it tends to be either (a) fairly surreal or (b) mocking people from southeast Germany for some reason.

And if you like history, it is full of noteworthy sites. I will never forget our visit to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin on a bitterly cold winter's day. Simply numbing, in every sense of the word. As soon as we entered its underground mortuary I was just overcome and had to leave. It's a terrible, haunted place, and the fact that you approach it via a street full of the sort of pleasant little homes you'd see in any English village just makes it seem even more chilling.

relaxed, friendly, great food, great bars and a great atmosphere. I go quite often as my wifes family are there. In addition to the Stasi museum and the Reichstag building make time to take a boat ride on Wannsee and also take a visit to Geiniocke Bridge where Russia and USA routinely exchanged their captured spies. Nearby Potsdam is also most definitely worth a visit.

- mistyped - should say Gleinicke Bridge.

On some days it is the most perfect pop song ever

which I intend to enjoy at the Frankfurt market in Brum this weekend.

Apart from that I'm appalingly ignorant about Germany and its people and culture. Looks like I have missed out.

Berlin - great place .Highly recommended .Great beers/bars, cheap travel .

Historically fascinating .The Stasi HQ/museum in a rundown block is a combination of banal,scary and bizarre - particularly the hidden spy stuff ( cameras in treetrunks etc)

Good Film museum ,Olympic stadium is a must - take your photo in Jesse Ownes Allee .

My best mate lives in Munich so I have visited quite often. It's a great city, though it sees itself as being quite different to the rest of Germany. Excellent restaurants, bars, shops etc. The Christmas market is a joy. I would warn against a traditional Baverian meal though, unless you crave fatty meat.

I worked a lot in Hamburg too when I lived in Paris (......) where the German colleagues used to treat me as a fellow Saxon against the perfidious French, and it's true, culturally we are not the same as the Germans but more like each other than we are the French. I got on fine with both of them but they hated each other....For tax reasons the French company had "bought" their German sister, but in reality it was a merger. Nonetheless the French management felt the need to tell the Hamburg lot what was what. And the Germans equally felt obliged to refuse point blank. As the working language was English, and the Germans' English was much better than mes amis, I was regularly dispatched to Hamburg to go 14 rounds with the German colleagues. Though this was pretty grueling for all concerned they were constantly courteous and pleasant (whilst saying no) and we went out a lot in the evening to the docks, the location of the Star club, markets, bars etc.

Incidentally should you want a cool hotel in Hamburg I stayed here a lot

http://www.gastwerk.com/english/

really superbly fitted out.

I've lived here for around two years now and I still love the place - I have some great pals here. I came here initially for a relationship, when that fell apart, I decided to look for a place to live and ended up buying a flat - comically cheap compared to London and well worth it. Since then, I've had a great time. Older friends reminisce about the divided city and bemoan the influx of Americans, Brits etc (ie. people like me, though they generally are too polite to say this directly) but its the friendliness, warmth and indeed humour of the Germans I've met here that have kept me here. There's a certain looseness within the city that appeals, against a backdrop of monumental history to keep things in too much bloody perspective, and I couldn't imagine living anywhere else right now.

I also love Lübeck, Hamburg, Wismar (incredibly atmospheric-the Bruges of Germany) and going to Bundesliga matches.
Exactly two years ago I was at a Borussia Monchengladbach game in the freezing cold drinking Gluhwein. And I think it costed €12 for the seat.
Cologne is beautiful at this time of year when the Christmas markets are on. In nearby Dusseldorf, the beer (altbier) tastes like brown ale.
There really is something for everyone, as we found out by mistake when a suspiciously over-friendly taxi driver took us to a brothel rather than back to our hotel, as previously instructed. We were in there for all of 30 seconds, just long enough for our eyes to get accustomed to the dark.
I'm back in Berlin in late January for some serious drinking.

Arbeit Matt Frei?

Leica, Rollei, Voigtlander, Minox, Zeiss ...

Very uncompromising but her friends were delightful and very hospitable. I always had lots of fun in Dusseldorf too, especially the old town. Not sure I would want to live there though although my colleague and I were made very welcome in a Berlin gay bar (it was the only place that had anywhere to sit down, no, really)
However, to return to the OP, the Germans made my very splendid, bullet proof, workhorse of a VW van. You can keep your Transits thanks.

with a viewing platform (so you can see what you've done before you flush it, not so others can watch you do it).

A healthy fascination with the turd is one of my abiding memories of Germany.

for Berlin. You can keep Gay Paris, the Eternal City and Londinium - Berlin is breathtaking.

Would also like to mention the wealth of great cinema of and about Berlin, including: Wings Of Desire, Run Lola Run, Goodbye
Lenin, Funeral In Berlin, Cabaret, Metropolis... to name but a few. Berlin's contribution to film is hard to measure.

with its unique skytrain is a city the size of Bristol but few people have heard of it and it's overshadowed by its very close neighbours Dusseldorf, Cologne, Essen, Dortmund. And Holland is an hour's drive.

I've been living here for 33 years now, married twice, kids growing up here. What appeals are the very low crime rate, lots of culture, general sense of civility and liberality, reasonable prices of most things, great infrastructure, radio to rival the BBC, and serious interest in the English language.

The downside is the infuriating bureaucracy as an expression of this striving for perfection which can only screw up anyway. Examples: the smoking ban varies from pub to pub, office to office, state to state, it's utter chaos; and in an attempt to iron out a few wrinkles in the language, a writing reform was initiated by the Kohl government about 14 years ago. Well it's still running, a whole generation can't write their own language with any confidence, and kids at school learn German "with reservations".

Still an interesting country though, much misunderstood in Britain (and yes, you are similar, particularly with here, the West, the old industrial heartland). The country is varied, tending to split broadly into north, south, east, west, middle.

I'm Irish btw and people here love the fact that I've learnt their language properly and my cute accent. I can almost get away with murder.

Over the last 25 years I've been there on holiday or for weekend trips about 30 times. Started going cos a friend married a German girl and moved there. But I just love it. It's so diverse and interesting and the Germans are usually really friendly.

At the risk of annoying our friends from the south. I'm of the opinion that much of the cliche German rhetoric that's still prevalent in the Metropolitan media is due to a sneaking envy that Germany is the country the English wish they really were - law abiding,(relatively) comfortable with their minorites, manufacturingly rich and powerful with a decent rail system, brilliant beer and successful national football team.

Deutchland Uber Alles I say

Germans on drugs!

Visited the Black Forest with my parents and grandparents. Whilst waiting to check in at a particularly picturesque campsite, my granddad struck up a conversation with another visiting Brit:
"It looks lovely here"
"Oh yes very nice; very clean, very hospitable. Just don't go into the showers after 7pm."
"Why not?"
"That's when they turn on the gas."

Oh deary deary me...

And yet we get so uppity when the Irish "bang on" about their 300 year old ancient historical grudges and how they should just get over it.

responses here cheers one and all!

Such a good one too...

Obviously, I can only go by my own experience, but I think Germany & the German people are wonderful.

I have visited several places during my time in the navy, & I always found them to be very friendly & sociable.

The last time I was there was just prior to re - unification, & I was invited to a social event at the naval base, this was just after the 1990 world cup, so lots of stick about the semi final, but taken & given in good spirit.

The social do continued back to our ship, where we took more drink before we were given a guided tour of the "nightlife" of Braemerhaven (spelling?).

A splendid time was had by all.

Wayne Rooney would have felt right at home.

Happy days.