Germany travel tips

Following are regularly updated travel tips for Germany.

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October 18 2008 Germany travel tips

The tiny Bavarian village of Oberammergau has since 1632 been been producing The Passion Play to celebrate the life of Jesus. Legend has it that the townsfolk back then made a pact with God to honour Jesus every 10 years if they were spared further deaths from the Black Plague sweeping Europe at the time. There were no more deaths and the villagers have kept their word, with more than 2,000 residents becoming actors, singers, musicians and technicians to stage the six to seven hour play every year ending in zero. Oberammergau's population is about 5400. The Passion Play will next be performed 100 times between May and October 2010.

An interesting destination is the Teufelsberg on the outskirts of Berlin, an 80 metre hill made from more than 10 million cubic metres of World War II rubble carted out of the city when the Allies' bombing campaign finally ended. This tree-lined hill in the Grunwald forest is the highest on the Brandenburg plain and provides stunning views over Berlin.

An attractive city in the Franconia region of northern Bavaria is Nuremburg, famous for its wooden toys, gingerbread (lebkuchen), massive Christmas market and delicious bratwurst sausages. Nuremburg was also the birthplace of nazism and many of its historic buildings have been rebuilt since the city was flattened by allied bombers at the end of World War II. Landmarks include the Nuremburg Palace of Justice (where courtroom 600 hosted the 315 day War Crimes Tribunal trial of war criminals), the reconstructed Old Town and the 11th century Kaiserburg (Imperial Castle) which for 500 years up to the 15th century was home to Germany's kings and emperors.

If you travel throughout Germany, you'll find some things such as train tickets and accommodation cost a little less in the reunified east of the country, where the unemployment rate is much higher than as in the west of Germany.

in 2007, unemployment in the east of Germany is more than double the national average.

Much of the money spent since reunification has gone into cities such as Dresden and Potsdam. However, the grey blocks of apartments from communist days still dominate other cities and towns.

Poverty is rife and many eastern centres have been dubbed "ghost towns", hundreds of thousands of their residents flocking west for a better life.

H5N1 bird flu was detected in February 2006 on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic Sea. This should not upset the travel plans of tourists but several areas on the island were closed to the public when the presence of bird flu was confirmed.

The Germany economy has been strengthening and in 2005 the economy had a huge trade surplus, soaring company profits and strong foreign investment, although high unemployment continues.

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