AMAA – Germany – Wonders of Deutschland – Amazing! – Reaction by Average Middle Aged American
In this video, I react to and discuss the video: ” WONDERS OF GERMANY | Most Amazing Places, Villages & Fun Facts | 4K Travel Guide ” or “ WUNDER DEUTSCHLANDS | Die erstaunlichsten Orte, Dörfer und interessanten Fakten | 4K-Reiseführer ” My commentary is my based on my opinion as an Average Middle Aged American that had not yet been to Germany or Europe.
#visitgermany #visitinggermany #travel #traveltogermany #germanytravel #germanyynews #German #Deutschland #Germanfood #Germanyfood #americanineurope #germanycheap #americanreacts #averageamerican #averagemiddleagedamerican #americantourist #americantourists #touringeurope #europeantravel #europe #cultureshock #europeantourist #europeanunion #visiteurope #visitingeurope #visitgermany #americaningermany #EatInGermany
Original Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEeOyzLw7Xo&t=4s
“Discover the wonders of Germany in this exclusive tour of the most beautiful places in Germany! From the vibrant heart of Berlin to the majestic Bavarian Alps, our video will take you on an unforgettable journey through culture, history, and breathtaking landscapes. We will visit Germany’s most fascinating cities like Munich, Cologne, and Hamburg, and explore the most beautiful villages in Germany, including Rothenburg ob der Tauber and Quedlinburg. Don’t miss our adventures in Germany’s must-see locations, where you’ll discover what to see and what to do in Germany. From the lively festivities of Frankfurt to the enchanted forests of the Black Forest, get ready for a vacation in Germany that celebrates tradition, innovation, and nature. With over 10 destinations, from Heidelberg to Füssen, our video is your ticket to discovering why Germany is considered one of Europe’s wonders. Watch and be inspired for your next trip: Germany awaits you with its most captivating places, fun facts, and a rich and vibrant culture. This isn’t just a journey, but a celebration of Germany, a marvel of Europe!” – EpicExplorationsTV EN
“Entdecken Sie die Wunder Deutschlands auf dieser exklusiven Tour zu den schönsten Orten Deutschlands! Vom pulsierenden Herzen Berlins bis zu den majestätischen bayerischen Alpen nimmt Sie unser Video mit auf eine unvergessliche Reise durch Kultur, Geschichte und atemberaubende Landschaften. Wir besuchen Deutschlands faszinierendste Städte wie München, Köln und Hamburg und erkunden die schönsten Dörfer Deutschlands, darunter Rothenburg ob der Tauber und Quedlinburg. Verpassen Sie nicht unsere Abenteuer zu Deutschlands sehenswerten Orten, bei denen Sie erfahren, was es in Deutschland zu sehen und zu unternehmen gibt. Machen Sie sich bereit für einen Urlaub in Deutschland, der Tradition, Innovation und Natur feiert, von den lebhaften Festlichkeiten Frankfurts bis hin zu den verzauberten Wäldern des Schwarzwalds. Mit über 10 Reisezielen, von Heidelberg bis Füssen, ist unser Video Ihre Eintrittskarte, um herauszufinden, warum Deutschland als eines der Wunder Europas gilt. Schauen Sie zu und lassen Sie sich für Ihre nächste Reise inspirieren: Deutschland erwartet Sie mit seinen faszinierendsten Orten, interessanten Fakten und einer reichen und lebendigen Kultur. Dies ist nicht nur eine Reise, sondern eine Feier Deutschlands, eines Wunders Europas!” – EpicExplorationsTV EN
Munich
Bavarian Alps
Cologne
Black Forest
Frankfurt
Dresden
Harz Mountains
Hamburg
Heidelberg
Leipzig
Rhineland-Palatinate
Nuremberg
Düsseldorf
Neuschwanstein Castle
Stuttgart
Berlin
Bremen
Rügen
Villages & Small Towns
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Bacharach
Quedlinburg
Goslar
Füssen
Monschau
Oberammergau
Bernkastel-Kues
Dinkelsbühl
Cochem
München
Bayerische Alpen
Köln
Schwarzwald
Frankfurt
Dresden
Harz
Hamburg
Heidelberg
Leipzig
Rheinland-Pfalz
Nürnberg
Düsseldorf
Schloss Neuschwanstein
Stuttgart
Berlin
Bremen
Rügen
Dörfer und Kleinstädte
Rothenburg ob der Tauber
Bacharach
Quedlinburg
Goslar
Füssen
Monschau
Oberammergau
Bernkastel-Kues
Dinkelsbühl
Cochem
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29 Comments
Red wine for red mulled wine or white wine for white mulled wine.
Sugar.
Spices such as cinnamon, cloves, star anise and orange peel, which give the drink its characteristic taste and aroma.
Mulled wine with a dash of brandy or rum is also popular. and hot !
German Cement is the best in the world 🌎 Miss Liberty 🗽 stands on German foundation! Water resistant proof in Hamburg 😊
1:45 This is Berlin Cathedral (the Protestant one). Its front is indeed symmetrical. But this is the view from the side, to the left is the front, at the right the rear.
7:25 47,000 bakeries in Germany – for comparison: There are 18,000 of the "ubiquitous" Starbucks in North America. Wanna add 8,000 Dunkin' Donuts in the USA? That's a meager 26,000, hehe.
11:00 Most sausages are pork, then comes poultry, beef, lamb, horse and venison are quite rare, although the Turkish minority has good beef sausages. The spices and the production methods vary, but there are no "fillers" in them, of course!
11:50 mulled wine!
12:50 Yes, of course there are "eternal students" who don't take their studies very seriously. So what? That's the whole point of studying at university (we don't call it "college" for a reason!)! No one tells a student (in a traditional university) what to learn and when. There is no curriculum! If you want a degree, there are exams and prerequisites (like completed seminars) that the student has to meet, but how he/she came to that point and when is not determined or checked, even if he/she never visited a single lecture!
The voice has definitively AI vibes.
6:50 Neuschwanstein is mostly for foreign tourists. It was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as private retreat based on Wagner opera romantics – but he run out of money and also out of office before it was finished. He was disenfranchised by the Bavarian government after he got deep in private debt even after getting large grants from Prussia (some years after Prussia had decimated the Bavarian army and in exchange for not longer opposing the Prussian leadership). He built also the palaces at Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee (the latter also never finished) before he started Neuschwanstein within sight of castle Hohenschwangau, built by his father, where he had grown up. Since Ludwig's younger brother was mentally ill, his uncle became his successor.
7:30 Over 3,200 kinds of bread are registered with the German Bread Institute (founded by the baker's associations), but by far not all bakeries have yet registered their bread specialties.
9:50 The definition of "sausage" does not only include "Bratwurst" (grilled sausage) and company, but also things which would called "deli meat" elsewhere. There is for example sliced ham (different kinds, e.g. of seasoning; smoked kinds like Black Forest ham; …), sliced roast beef and sliced pork roast, Bologna type sausages (in Germany called Lyoner = Lyonesse; also available in different variations), head cheese (German: Schwartenmagen, Presswurst, different regional types), different types of blood and liver sausages (some for frying, some for boiling in Sauerkraut, some smoked and dried, some used as spread on bread, …), different salami type sausages, smoke-dried or air-dried sausages, …
Thuringian and Nuremberg grilled sausages have similar fillings with similar herbs, but Thuringians are long, Nuremberg sausages have only 7 to 9 cm and are eaten at the half dozen; Upper Swabian "Geschlagene" (beaten ones) come pre-cooked without skin before they are fried; "Rote" (reds) and "Schübling" are pre-smoked (hot smoked; there are also cold smoked varieties); "Grobe" have a coarse (=grob) filling; Frankfurt has its Rindswurst (beef sausage), other places have lamb sausages or wild boar sausages …
11:40 Christmas markets were mostly small events before the 1980s, organized by some sport clubs and charity associations, only open at the weekends in Advent; now they are mostly heavily commercialized. There are a handful of really traditional big Christmas markets like the Christkindl market in Nürnberg or the Striezelmarkt in Dresden, but they have all in common that they are closed during Christmas (otherwise they would be winter markets, not Christmas markets). Most are open from the first weekend of Advent (4 weeks before Christmas) to the last weekend of Advent (the weekend before Christmas). A nice video with some rather unusual markets would be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEFXPFQHL-4
12:10 Glühwein: Wine (in most cases red wine) heated up with spices like cinnamon, cloves, anise, orange peels and others, sometimes extended with either some grape juice or some orange juice, maybe some honey. Feuerzangenbowle (fire tongs punch bowl) gets additionally a sugar cone above, which is soaked with rum and then set on fire.
13:10 Universities have admission criteria (depending on the chosen course of study either certain high school diploma ("Abitur") or exams at the university itself). It is free of tuition fees for all EU citizens (for people from outside the EU there can different rules depending on the state the university is in, but even then tuition fees are never higher than 2,000 Euro per semester). There is however for all students an administrative fee (depending on the university 25 to 230 Euro per semester, often including an obligatory ticket for free use of public transport in the region).
It is an investment in the future of the country. Yes, some people could take advantage of the benefits of being a student (like free public transport, access to an apartment in student dorms, free entry at many places) while not studying at all, but even if some of those investments in people fail, most will be profitable for the society in the end. Some states have however introduced tuition fees for "overtime" students – for every course exists a standard duration of study, and if you exceed that number of semesters without passing you bachelor exam, you're classified as long-term student (which can mean additional obligatory counseling, additional fees or in serious cases even exmatriculation / expulsion).
France has the highest density of bakeries, but Germany has by far the most types of bread.
Every master butcher has to create a sausage for his exam, just like bakers.
In the US you can buy your place at university, in Germany you have to earn it by getting good grades.
21:10 Look at the huge 30 foot high stone in the foreground on the right, that looks a bit like a fountain or a Christmas tree! There are three identical ones of them! Guess where the other two are! Right, they are the "tiny" tops of the two spires! All three are the same size, mind you!
Luftfeuchtigkeit kann im Hochsommer für ein paar Wochen recht hoch sein, aber nichts im Vergleich mit den amerikanischen Südstaaten. Darum spielt sich unser Leben auch hauptsächlich draußen ab. auch in
Städten.
Diese Kanäle und Bäume in den Städten helfen Temperaturen herunterzukühlen.
28:45 Each city council decides whether and where high-rise buildings may be built. Most cities have even banned them altogether. We also have direct democracy at city and state level, so that citizens' initiatives can always be formed to demand or prevent certain building projects (including private ones on private land!) through local referendums. These referendums bind the councils and the state government when successful.
Skyscrapers can be built where the ground allows it, see Manhattan, half of it has some, because the other part was swamp. A skyline like that is nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to live in it.
32:30 Of course we legalized prostitution, what did you expect? Sex workers are a regular profession that pay taxes, and the government/health insurance even pays for sexual services for disabled people who would otherwise not be able to enjoy sex.
As in the US, the construction of skyscrapers is sometimes prohibited: Munich and Washington DC.
31:47 the bridge was rebuilt for the expansion of "Miniatur Wunderland", check it out, it will make your head explode. Unique in the world in its size and perfection.
33:30 No, just like Venice and Amsterdam and other cities, Hamburg is built on muddy grounds, there is no bedrock. And just like in Venice, thousands and thousands of trees were driven into the mud upside down. This way the ground is stabilized enough to build houses on it that last hundreds of years. Because the trees are under water, they cannot rot and everything is stable basically forever.
33:50 No, these channels aren't rivers. Although Hamburg lies on the Elbe river and 40 km away from the coast, the tides come up the river into these little waterways every six hours. You can see the tide marks on both sides on the walls. The water is neither fresh river water nor sea water, it's brackish. The little square holes were for wood beams to stick in and to form a runway alongside the warehouses. Ships and barques came into the channels to be loaded and emptied by cranes built into the rooftops of the warehouses.
Prostitution is legal throughout Germany.
In the US, Las Vegas and a few other places, or it is filmed and put online, then it is also legal everywhere in the USA. 🤔
Heidelberg: Mark Twain was there for a while, Bunsen burners were invented there.
39:50 No, it's also for normal people, not just tourists. You can of course use your car in the city, but public transport, cycling or walking are better and usually faster.
41:25 You don't have to imagine getting up in the morning and drinking your coffee on a castle balcony! Just do it. Many of the castles are hotels now. Ok, what you'll see from the balcony is not your property, but hey, there's always a catch, isn't it?
42:10 No, we don't build outside defined community borders, with the one exception that sometimes a farm gets permission to build in the free landscape. We don't build new villages or towns, but we try to use the already developed land in a denser manner. It's called "Nachverdichtung", where unused or formerly used space from factories is redeveloped as modern environmentally friendly living quarters. We don't have urban sprawl in the American sense, but big cities are gobbling up neighboring villages and become metropolitan areas, that's right – and wrong, hehe …
24:00 The Brothers Grimm had nothing to do with the Black Forest. They lived their life in the region of Hesse and Thuringia, where they collected the fairy tales – some narrated in Huguenot families originally from France, some from the Harz region (another region of hills and forests, including the Brocken, the legendary place of witches' congresses in Walpurgis night), some from Westphalia (where the brothers von Haxthausen were their correspondents) and none from the Black Forest.
25:20 Freiburg is situated at the edge between the Upper Rhine valley and the western foot of the Black Forest; the Upper Rhine plain between Basel and Karlsruhe gets the most sunshine in all of Germany. It is a rift valley between the Vosges in the West and the Black Forest in the East. The average temperature in July is about 68° F or 20° C, but it can go up to 40°C (2024 up to 36° C), and springs and autumns are also warmer than elsewhere in Germany. When cherries start to bloom in the Black Forest, they are ripe around Freiburg.
29:10 Old buildings are protected by a heritage protection authority (Denkmalschutzbehörde), based on state laws. As long as building is on their lists it cannot be demolished. Many cities like Frankfurt however were destroyed in WW 2, and only a few central places were rebuilt. Most skyscrapers in Frankfurt were built by banks and other finance business companies – other companies are normally not very interested in building skyscrapers, which are expensive to build and to maintain, which means higher costs per office space.
The Berlin Cathedral 1:45 is symmetrical. The view in the video only shows the church from the side. Looking at the main portal, the towers to the left and right of the cathedral are the same height. A tip. This Protestant church is not only impressive on the inside. Above all, it has an incredible organ and acoustics. Just listen to the following video on YT. I think, you will be impressed: "Xavier Varnus plays Bach's Taccata & Fugue in the Berliner Dom"
In Frankfurt/am Main there is a special constellation of economic strength, many people, in a cityscape that was largely destroyed by the Second World War and a great shortage of land, which is why skyscrapers are being built here since beginnig of the 80th in last century. And the Skyline changed since the last years drastically: https://youtu.be/NJcUWjxDBHc?si=OhURNhc5yD9Et9ko The stand alone tower at 1:39 is the ECB Tower (Headquarter of European Central Bank). Frankfurt is listed, alongside Munich and Düsseldorf, in the top ten most livable cities in the world. The city also offers one of the highest standards of living in Germany.
Yes, Prostitution is legal. But the redlightdistrict in Hamburg is also a big partymile
The one castle standing out – Neuschwanstein – is the one castle that was built by modern architects when cranes, etc. were available and it has a built-in power grid, elevators, running water etc. that real castles painstakingly had to include centuries after they were originally built. It was only built at the end of the 19th century to fulfill the magolamiac fantasies of king Ludwig II. As such, many Germans, myself included, do not consider it a real castle – at least not on the same level as most of the other historical castles all over Germany. It is for a good reason that Disney chose it as its model for the Sleeping Beauty castle… It is a disneyesque castle from its conception…
In Germany, everyone has the right to free education at universities, as long as they meet the requirements for the course. Günter Blum fulfills his dream at the age of 91
At the age of 91, he studies history at the University of Marburg and shows that you are never too old to learn.
Many German cities were destroyed by WWII due to heavy bombings. Some cities decided to rebuild the old buildings, others decided to build new architectural works. This is how this mix of different building styles came about.
Only three and a half minutes into the original video and already I'm fed up with it just perpetuating stereotypes.
Neuschwanstein is about as genuine a castle as the Disney castle. It was a mad king's vanity project, built only in the 1870s, which is pretty much yesterday when it comes to castles and wasn't even finished before the guy ended his own life. Today it's nothing but a tourist trap. I went there once with pretty high expectations and left utterly disapointed.
Next one: the infamous Autobahn. It's not "a highway stretching over 13.000km of pure, speed limit free freedom." It's simply our motorway network and it does have speed limits in place on about a third of it's entire lenght.
Mulled wine. There ya go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mulled_wine
So … the only way to take things seriousely is if you pay your last penny for it? I think not. And yes, depending on what you want to study and at what university, it can be next to impossible to get in. Or you simply may have to wait for a year or two.
Well, as a resident of Leipzig, born and raised, and since you happened to ask that question when Leipzig was up in the video I think I can chip in. The streets shown in the video were all very much city center, especially the pedestrian zones. But yeah, that's where people go shopping although online shopping has put a strain on some of the smaller businesses, making pretty much every german city center a catwalk of the ever same big brands who can also still afford the huge rents for city center commercial spaces. But that's true everywhere, I guess. Biking is extremely popular in Leipzig, as it is very flat, rarely and hill that deserves the name in the whole region. The city also has a very extensive tram and bus network, coming in on No 2 in Germany after Berlin, a city 6 times its size! That's my usual choice of transports as it pretty much gets you anywhere you need in a reasonable time. And of course you can also drive your car, there are several under- and overground parking garages near the city center. The city administration is on a major "make traffic greener" path though and finds ever new ways of making driving less fun, with the expected mixed responses from the public.
And may I say: it is so super weird to see the city I know so well mirrored!!
I think in large parts it's general consensus to not expand cities into untouched parts of wilderness in Germany. That's because there aren't really too many ares of untouched wilderness in Germany. Cities are usually surrounded by farmland. And while some new development may happen on the outskirts of cities from time to time, it is thank god very far from the horror of suburbia the US has created around their cities. High population density is not an inherently bad thing. It means short ways to whatever places and usually also decent public transport. I honestly wouldn't want to live in a US style suburb. I have three supermarkets in walking distance and a tram stop literally outside my door. What more do you need? I love driving my car. But knowing that whenever I wanted to leave my house to go literally anywhere the car is the only choice I got? No thanks…
from my childhood room i could saw three burgruinen at ones. (casle ruines) I never thought much about it as a kid…., it was just normal:) and we played up there. as teenagers we watched the sunset with our first love from there…and had a lot of partys…. , it was a great youth…
Why shouldn't you take your university studies seriously?
Please remember that although there are no excessive tuition fees*, there are still living costs and fees for various small things. Roughly speaking, you need around €1200-1600 per month, depending on the university city and region, to pay rent, eat & drink etc. And yes, you can also apply for state support (student loans), but parents and/or part-time jobs often support you.
* an average of around €360 per semester for travel tickets, university registration and other fees.
WRONG, there are more than 3,200 types of bread – not 300!!!
13:20 thats the us way of thinking: give me mine I want mine, dont share. you havent earned that money! thats mine mine mine. we germans look at it completely different: we are all in this struggle together. lets come together! – 19:00 we have a law, that you cannot prohibit, even if its your land, anybody from walking into the woods and such! great reaction – i hope for part 2 <3 much love from germany! you are awsome!