German view of England

Just got back from the UK last week,my German "Kollege"responded today with this

"Tcha,da ist immer neblich unds regnet viel".

Unlike Germany of course which has sunshine 365 days a year

Anyway,I googeld it and guess what,average rainfall per year UK 700mm,Germany average 712mm.

They always follow it up with the bad food line,even though they have never been there.Now I find this annoying.I tend to not make up my mind about a place until I have actually been there myself.

I agree the food used to be stodgy in the UK but its improved a lot in the last 10 years IMHO.
I recently had some great Pub Lunches at the Carvery.

The foggy statement ...yeah so what,but no more than it is here.
I dont go back to the UK and tell all my friends that Germans ALL wear leather trousers

Hi there,

I love the Fatherland but I have to admit, food is probably not an area they should be pointing fingers with!

Question about your name- What "S2" are you referring to exactly? Is it an Audi S2 or a Porsche 944S2 or neither?

Cheers

Hey Sun King,

The "S2" is referring to my LOTUS its an S2 or Mk2 Elise. its also black.

I sign in with this name on more motorsport related forums and it was just kind of stuck as a name.

That is a great statistic to throw back.

Anyone got any other good'uns?

Birth rate in Germany (2005) : 8.3 per 1,000 population
Birth rate in UK (2005) : 10.8 per 1,000 population

Conclusion : We are better at spreading the love

Unfortunately there are enough Germans out there who view the UK the same way as many from the UK view Germany. These people have either never been to the other country or live on stereotypes:

- we've all got red hair(!)
- we have a full English for breakfast every morning
among many others

- they have no sense of humour(I admit it's not as good as ours)
- they only eat sausage and sauerkraut
- they spend most of their time in the hills filming pornos
- they think the UK is expensive whereas many of them have only ever been to London
among many others

These people never get to know the others and find out the similarities.

-we both tend towards meat and potatoes
-we both like a drink
-we both love sport
among many many others

I think I disagree here! I have never had a nice meal in the UK without paying completely over the odds for it and I find most pubs do microwaved food. Is the Carvery some new pub chain?

Have to agree with the Muffin here. If you go out for a meal at a top restaurant in each country, the UK wins hands-down. Go to a normal pub or restaurant and Germany will normally win because you generally get real cooked food as opposed to the warmed up pre-cooked stuff in a British pub (probably a result of only large breweries running pubs).

Purple Muffin,

The Carvery is kind of like the Harvester they do Sunday Roasts at the weekends and Salmon and Lamb and stuff mid week.

I think it depends on where you live.London has some amazing resaturants although I admit its expensive then.

Still maybe the UK doesn´t have the greek/Itallian/Thai choice that Germany has,but we are comparing German food with English.

The bratwurst is nice but nothing to write home about and no better than Fish and Chips.

What I would love to see in Germany is a "LITTLE CHEF" type place you know all day breakfasts and pancakes and stuff.

Anyway I am not knocking restaurants in germany,I just dont like the pot calling the kettle black.There are good and bad points about both the UK food and Germany.
What the UK lacks in restaurants it makes up for in Supermarkets that are decades ahead of the Germans.Germany does have better restaurants though,and you can eat out here cheaper than th UK.

That Harvester chains and all the other incarnations of it is horrible, simply horrible!!


Good thing about Germany is that you can get Mittagstisch meals for about half the price youd pay in the UK at a pub. And it mostly tastes good too.

They are all owned by Whitbread aren't they??? Yuk!!! Sorry

I agree I do not like the pot calling the kettle either but when I try to defend food in the UK I find myself in a losing battle!!!

or we are better in safer sex

Agree on the restaurants guys,but we are talking about German food compared to English food. Not your local Thai,Greek,Mexican etc.That is imported food and not strictly German.Normally run by Greek or Thai people. My Kolleges were slagging English food without ever being there.

I am sorry to admit though I am a little biased because I am a "LITTTLE CHEF" junkie.First thing I do when I get of the ferry is hit the nearest Little Chef for a full Olympic breakfast and a pot of tea with a "free" refill

- they think the UK is expensive whereas many of them have only ever been to London
among many others

i have been to the areas around Liverpool and Birmingham, Huddersfield, Hayworth Heath , and in Devon, and going out and have food and drinks was expensive in all of this areas compared to here

Agree 100% Hannah,the UK is more flippin expensive no matter where you go in all areas that I can think of,except maybe car Insurance.

This has a lot more to do with the strong pound and the crap Euro.

I find my car insurance cheaper here than it was in the UK only costs me 300€ a year!

What car insurance company do you use Purple?

I can insure my car in the UK for $500 a year,the best I managed after shopping around in Germany was 2,100 Euro.

At least you can eat out without getting lung cancer and going home with your clothes and hair stinking of smoke

The euro and the pound, in my humble opinion, are currently at the same traditional level as the pound to the DM all those moons ago.

A pound used to get you 3 marks. It now gets you about 1.48 euro. 1.48 euro is about 3 marks in olde money.
The euro is currently doing quite alright in terms of value, in many ways it is too strong, but certainly not at all crap.

As for an expensive UK, me finds the place extremely expensive.
Years ago the UK was a paradise for cheaper goods (especially if you were Irish on holiday in the UK)
Nowadays - the figures on a lot of goods in the UK are the same as those in euroland, the only thing is that the currency sign is different.


$500 a year? has the pound been replaced by the dollar ??!!??

My car is 590euro per year, fully comp. makes about £410 in europounds. Next year it will go down another 10%
2,100 euro sounds like an Allianz quote. Standard Allianz quotation for non-Germans...

But they don't cook the food themselves. They just open the package and warm it up . And if you don't believe me, next time you are there ask for a slight variation of what is on the menu. Not a chance in hell.

On the insurance front, my car there & here...

VW Touran 1.9TDI

Germany (Volksfuersorge): 840 Euros per year
UK (Tesco Insurance): 320 Pounds

both fully comp with a small excess.

[quote]they think the UK is expensive [code]

for the very good reason that it is expensive. Everywhere. Some parts more expensive than others, but pretty much every part of the UK is more expensive than the continent.

And in those parts where you can get a pint of lager of GBP 1.80 is a spit and sawdust place that you'd be glad to escape from with your limbs intact.

Another similarity that you missed though:

- we both tried to rule the world (just that out attempt was a little bit more successful)

Diesel cars are usually much more expensive to insure in Germany... favourite company car engine, and of all those rental car companies.

Me has a Mégane estate petrol. I pays more at the pump, but less in tax and insurance.

In the UK the only difference(s) between a diesel and petrol is higher priced diesel but lower fuel consumption.

And lower car duty ! What you pay extra at the pump for diesel in the UK, you save on road tax. In Germany you pay much more tax for a diesel.

Swings and roundabouts...

The people on the deutsche-in-london forum agree with Black S2 on the food question - they've just been pointing out the error of that particular myth to someone who said it was rubbish.

http://www.deutsche-in-london.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6841

Have to say I agree too, there's no excuse for eating at a Harvester nowadays unless you like their food. As a vegetarian I'm always going to be biased towards Britain as I actually get nice things to eat and a choice - there are only so many Gemueseplatte you can get excited by - but restaurant food really has improved beyond recognition there now. Sure there's awful places but that holds for Germany too.

Prices - I think that's more Germany is bizarrely cheap - step over the border and prices will almost double. I lived in Belgium and the price differences are insane.

I really can't speak for the whole of the UK but where my mother lives (North Norfolk coast), you get the most delicious freshest seafood really cheaply in local restaurants. In Sheffield, my German other half and I have already got a few favourite places - even the pubs tend to cook from scratch. Tasty, inexpensive food in nice restaurants really is readily available in the UK - I don't know, maybe the trick is to eat at smaller restaurants and pubs rather than chains which tend to buy in bulk more. I do agree with Luke though, you can't often get a slight variation from the menu here. Mind you, I just love any meal that I don't cook myself though...

I'm neither German, nor English and personally I love good home cooked traditional English dishes, especially desserts, but frankly since living in Germany I stick to the foreign 'exotic' food.
Thank God my German husband has never been into German cuisine either because he would suffer a lot. Here we eat mainly Mexican, Indian, Thai or Italian food, when we lived in London we had all of those choices too but I was also satisfied with eating English dishes, I think saying that English food is terrible is just a myth, it really has changed loads in the last decade, or maybe it is just a matter of taste...

Indeed. From my experience with my German friends, I often say that not even the Germans eat German food anymore. They're too busy munching on their Döner or hamburgers or pizza or satay.

Rather like the Brits are too busy munching on their tikka masala.

Most "German" food I find frankly dreary and awful, with a few exceptions (nothing like some really good freshly made Kartoffelpuffer). I rather like curry, Tex-Mex and whatnot, but unfortunately 'round these parts there isn't a whole lot to choose from in the way of good restaurants. By stark contrast, I was recently in Oslo (same size as Hannover, roughly) and the food was magnificent and the variety wonderful. Of course, it was also magnificently priced, Oslo being the world's most expensive city nowadays.

The last time I ate food in the UK was in 1994, so given the statements about things improving in the last ten years, I'll hold my tongue. ;-)

(Though from what I remember it was as good as anything I've gotten in Germany in comparable restaurants and pubs.)

cornflake watches Ali G

I love mother in laws cooking (german), the wife (also german) can`t quite get it right!

Now I try my best to fit in. (when in rome...)
but who in their right mind would eat this RAW, on bread rolls?

[img]http://www.marions-kochbuch.de/index-bilder/mett.jpg[/img]

Germans LOVE it, mince meat raw, there`s nothing like buying a pound, for bolognese, going to the fridge and finding that the "fairies" have helped their selves to a few bite, JESUS!

My husband loves that Mettwurst stuff and he's not even German. It makes me heave just looking at it. He especially likes the one with onions in it. God does it stink. And would someone tell me the pleasures of eating rock hard, old dried sausage that looks like a preserved part of that iceman they found in a glaciers' anatomy!! All brown and shrivelled yuk (That's not solely aimed at Germans as Italians and Spaniards seem very fond of it too)

Cool! I'm no expert on Lotuses (I'm a Porschefile/BMW fanatic) but I've heard good things about your car.

Heh. My German MIL can cook pretty well if she tries. The problem is she usually doesn't try. :doh:


Umm...should I admit that I've tried it, and kinda liked it?

Probably not.

OK, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to order it at a restaurant, but I didn't think it was bad. (Yes, with onions.)