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Spot on

Dealing with the Germans at a professional level is always an enriching experience.
I always feel more earnest and inspired to 'work more, to 'do more' whenever i meet up with Germans. And in the last couple of years, courtesy work and the Fulbright program, this has been one of the nationalities i have interacted the most with. Stereotypes about Germans being gruffy (i coined that term) are just that: stereotypes.

As professionals, they would be one of the most thorough people one would come across, anywhere in the world. When they say it, they mean it. And when they mean it, they do it. And if it cant be done, they tell you as soon as they know it.
With Germans, one expects very few of the tricks that the usual suspects play.
And this is true irrespective of the nature of the professional relationship. I deal with Germans as a customer, and have German customers as well; whichever way one looks at it, the earnestness stands out.


East and West, the twain shall meet
It is also interesting to interact with people from the former GDR, or East Germany and to be in establishments in that part of the country. When i inquired about a comparison between the erstwhile East and West Germany, several people from the eastern part told me that infrastructure in the east has now become better than in the west. The reason is that there was very little of it in the east when the wall came down, so most of the new stuff has now happened there. I can still sense a little bit of iffiness in some people from the west, but that is so much lesser than what it was, say, a decade ago.

All this is in the context of a tremendous amount of transition the German society is undergoing today. The demographics are altering. The country have a lot many more Turks, Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians, Russians than there were even a decade ago. There is an acute concern about the Eurozone. "For how long can we carry the burden" is a question a lot of people are beginning to ask.
For now, though, Germans are carrying along (a la Boxer from Animal Farm)
  The trains and the timings
Impeccable timing, clockwork precision. The cliched phrase, 'One can set the watch by train timings', is spot on here. The public transportation system in most major cities in Germany would be the stuff of science fiction for all Indian ones.
Not too many people still use the e-ticket, for sure a lesser % than in India.That is where we would be scoring, perhaps.
Trains are also a very important player in the journey towards environmental well being, and it is often heartening to see one of world's largest automobile manufacturing countries demonstrate a high level of consciousness and effort towards the environment through the use of public transport and bicycles.

Stay Veggie, stay healthy
Germany is perhaps one the easiest countries in Europe to find vegetarian food in. And this is beyond the odd traditional pasta or dal makhani that one might get outside of India and Italy. In Germany, potatoes are an all weather favourite. An increasingly large number of people are turning veggie too. Salad bars and fruit joints are one of the fastest growing food segments. The country has a long history of 'organized' vegetarianism. As far back as 1867,  Eduard Baltzer, from Liepzig, founded the Deutsche Verein für natürliche Lebensweise (German Natural Living Society) - the first society to promote vegetarianism. Soon, every major city in Germany had vegetarian societies, and after a series of mergers and name changes, all combined to become the Vegetarier-Bund Deutschlands (Vegetarian Federation of Germany).
http://www.ivu.org/history/societies/vbd.html