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And if that isn’t enough of a calling card for sugar fiends, Germany offers an enormous range of other delicious confections, from Lebkuchen (gingerbread) and Nürnberger Lebkuchen (soft cookies with nuts, fruit peel, honey and spices from Nuremberg) to Leckerli (honey-flavoured ginger biscuits) and Lübecker Marzipan (marzipan from Lübeck).

Christmas brings its own specialities. Stollen is a spiced cake loaded with sultanas, raisins and candied peel, sprinkled with icing sugar and occasionally spruced up inside with a ball of marzipan. It’s rarely baked in German homes today (although when it is, it’s exquisite), but you’ll find it in abundance in Christmas markets – Stollen from Dresden is reputedly the best.

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DRINKS

While coffee in Germany is not as strong as that served in France or Italy, you can expect a decent cup. All the usual varieties are on offer, including cappuccinos and lattes, although you still frequently see French-style bowls of milky coffee (Milchkaffee).

Tea frequently comes in a glass or pot of hot water, with the tea bag served to the side. East Frisians in Bremen and Lower Saxony are the country’s biggest consumers of tea, and have dozens of their own varieties, which they traditionally drink with cream and Kluntje (rock sugar).

Germans once almost exclusively drank sparkling mineral water (Mineralwasser), with loads of bubbles (mit Gas or mit Kohlensäure). Truly still mineral water (stilles or ohne Kohlensäure) has become much more widespread, but it remains harder to find than in some other European countries.

Note that the price of many drinks in plastic bottles includes a Pfand (deposit), which will be given back to you if you return the bottle to the shop or another similar outlet. Soft drinks frequently come in cans (Dosen), too.

When not guzzling beer or wine (see below and Click here), Germans like a shot of Schnaps (any hard liquor). This comes in a variety of flavours, from apple (Apfel), pear (Birne), or plum (Pflaume) to wheat (Korn).

Digestive herbal drinks, such as Jägermeister, are also still popular, although mainly among the older population.

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Beer

It’s not as cheap as the Czech Republic’s world-famous lagers, but German beer is patently up there with the best and is well worth the premium. Brewing here goes back to Germanic tribes, and later monks, so it follows in a hallowed tradition. Unsurprisingly, a trip to an atmospheric Bavarian beer garden or a Cologne beer hall is one of the first things on many foreign visitors’ to-do lists.

The ‘secret’ of the country’s golden nectar dates back to the Reinheitsgebot (purity law), demanding breweries use just four ingredients – malt, yeast, hops and water. Passed in Bavaria in 1516, the Reinheitsgebot stopped being a legal requirement in 1987, when the European Union struck it down as uncompetitive. However, many German brewers still conform to it anyway, seeing it as a good marketing tool against mass-market, chemical-happy competitors.

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What did Germany’s first railway line carry when it opened between Nuremberg and Fürth in 1835? Beer.

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Thanks to the tradition of the Reinheitsgebot, German beer is supposed to be unique in not giving you a Katzenjammer or Kater (hangover). However, party-goers downing 5 million litres of the stuff at Munich’s Oktoberfest (see the boxed text, Click here) must surely disagree!

VARIETIES

Despite frequently tying their own hands and giving themselves just four ingredients to play with, German brewers turn out 5000 distinctively different beers.

They achieve this via subtle variations in the basic production process. At the simplest level, a brewer can choose a particular yeast for top or bottom fermenting (the terms indicating where the yeast lives while working – at the top or bottom of the brewing vessel).

The most popular form of brewing is bottom fermentation, which accounts for about 85% of German