Now here's another thing - what is it with Germans, trains, and bottles? Eh?

When I was on the S-bahn originally, I noticed that the trains don't have the usual polite notices that you get on British tube trains: please don't eat smelly food, please please don't put your feet on the seats, and please please would you please not listen to your walkman so bloody loud, please.

Quite possibly this is because there is no need, either because the Germans are so well behaved that they never do these things, or (slightly more likely) there is bound to be a retired civil servant travelling on the train who will consider it their civic duty to draw the offender's attention to the fact that such things are not acceptible, and contrary to the rail regulations.

What they do have is a sign showing a picture of an open window and a bottle, indicating presumably that it is not in keeping with rail regulations to throw bottles out of the window.

Now, I suppose it's possible that some German youth, brain fuzzed by drinking too much pils, and wondering what to do with the Regensburger bottle he has just finished, might possible spy the open window and think, "aha, that's where I can throw it!"

But, in a list of likely train offences, how high would this arise? I have travelled on public transport in a number of countries and no other nation finds it necessary to advise their citizens that throwing bottles out of windows is a little, well, unadvisable. Surely the nation that gave us Goethe and Kant is capable of working this out without official help?

I was just pondering this, on a train going to Dresden, when I wandered down the carriage on the way to the toilet.

In the toilet, sure enough, a sign informed customers that it was an offence to throw newspapers into the toilet. Or bottles.

The Germans have decided that the big word of 2002 was teuro. That's teuer (dear, costly) and euro. It is widely believed here that the introduction of the Euro coincided with a surge of price increases.

Unlike most Euro countries, the German government did not take special steps to ensure that the introduction of the new currency was not used by businesses as an opportunity to conceal price rises. However, the Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistics Office) has denied that prices have risen sharply. It points out that while people clearly notice when prices go up, they pay much less attention to prices that stay the same or even fall.

The Euro does at least allow comparisons to be made between the cost of goods in various European countries - and it shows that Germany is generally one of the cheapest. The normal price of can of beer in this country (apart from the recent hamster sell-offs) is around 58 cent, as opposed to € 1.73 in Ireland and € 2.79 in Finland. If you want to be clean, you'll pay just 63 cent for a bar of soap here as opposed to 78 cent in Ireland, 87 cent in Luxemburg, and a whopping 99 cent in Spain and, yet again, Finland.

(For purposes of comparison, one Euro is worth about 67 UK pence and roughly the same as a US dollar)

I tried posting this entry from Berlin, but it disappeared somewhere into the cybersphere. Maybe the original version will turn up years from now. But in the meantime, here's the entry revisited and somewhat enlarged.

The two major news stories in Germany when we arrived were about sex and hamsters. Two different and unrelated stories, I must point out.

The popular right-wing paper Bild (which in the UK would be called a tabloid even though it's actually broadsheet) was deeply concerned about the TV presenter Michelle Hunziker. On the day I looked at the paper, they were reporting that she had not had sex for 381 days. This was national news, and drove Iraq off the front page.

The other major story was about hamsters. These little creatures, as you know, tend to store food in their cheeks, and in German hamsteren means to store food away. So when the big discount stores decided to respond to a new law making it compulsory to include a return deposit in the price of beer cans by selling off their old stock cheap, the German public had a chance to hamster themselves some very cheap beer for Christmas. In a couple of days the price had fallen to 15 cent (about 22 pence or 15 US cents) for a half litre can of lager.

German kezboard ß nothing is where itäs supposed to be.

Aaargh! See what I mean?

So far - Christmas Market near the Alexanderplatz, gluhwein, knacker (see previous visit to Berlin for funny comments on this) and er ... that's it.

More later. If I'm still sober.

Christmas is coming, and the commuters are getting unfit.

I saw an advert on TV last night for cold and flu remedy. It's one of those things in a bright red and yellow box to make them seem ultra-effective.

In the ad, some unfortunate guy is sitting on a train looking very sorry for himself when his boss calls him on the mobile to tell him he has to get to a meeting. He obviously should be at home getting some rest but instead he pours this instant cold remedy down his throat and goes off to sell. Or buy. Or something.

Whatever happened to trade unions? Whatever happened to the idea that, if you're sick, you need time off to recover? What about the fact that, by going into work, you're spreading your germs to all your colleagues?

You work all the hours you can, you never get to see your children, you spend all your money on an outrageous mortgage, and all the money you have left on an outrageous season ticket, and when you're sick you take medicine that just conceals the symptoms.

And then they sack you and cut your pension.

Like I said, whatever happened to trade unions?

Maybe it's because I trained as an archivist, but I tend to scrutinise texts for signs of authenticity.

Or, come to think of it, maybe it's because I'm a skeptic. Either way I automatically doubt any e-mails that get forwarded to me.

A friend of mine just forwarded me a scare about the date rape drug Rohypnol, used in conjunction with a tranquilliser called Progesterex, which renders the victim sterile for life, as well as unconscious.

Anybody with a smidgin of web sense will instantly spot that as an urban legend. A quick trip to www.snopes.com confirmed this.

However, even without that there was something that made me wary. It claimed that the victim had been kidnapped at the "Gas nightclub (London)" and then dumped naked "in Neutral Bay".

Huh? London doesn't have bays. It's inland. You have to go way downriver to get to the sea, and there's nowhere called Neutral Bay in the Thames Estuary.

A quick Google, and I found the place. It's in Sydney, Australia.

Another Google revealed that Gas nightclub is also in Sydney.

So someone has passed on an e-mail scare from Australia without even bothering to change the details except by one word. Do people not even read these things before sending them on?

Trust me. Google is your friend. And Snopes is your friend's friend.

So I will be in Berlin this Christmas with Susanne and Philipp.

I will be experiencing the traditional German Christmas, including the Christmas Markets, gluhwein, and opening presents on Christmas Eve.

We had hoped for a bit of snow but apparently there won't be any because it's been too cold.

I had hoped to bring at least one element of the traditional Irish/British Christmas - some Christmas Crackers.

For those who are not acquainted with Christmas crackers, they're little packages in garish paper. They have a tiny patch of gunpowder - less than on a match - which makes a bang when you pull them. Two people take a cracker, each holding an end, and pull. Whoever gets the bigger bit after the bang gets to keep the contents.

The contents are usually tacky rubbish - a big coloured paper hat which you wear, a very cheap plastic toy made in Hong Kong, and a joke so old it has whiskers bigger than Santa Claus's. The more awful the better, actually.

I thought that, just in case the Germans thought British culture was poor in quality, this might settle the matter. Not necessarily for good, though. If you see what you mean.

My attempts at cultural exports, however, have been thwarted by Ryanair.

Their conditions of carriage for hand luggage include the following:

Explosives, munitions, ammunition (including blank cartridges), hand guns, fireworks, christmas crackers, party poppers, fireworks, sparklers, flares and pistol caps.

Huh? I'm not likely to try and hijack the plane with a cracker. Even with a very old and potentially explosive joke...

PS just in case you've been searching for Ryanair's flights to Berlin, I should point out that I was getting confused. Usually we go Ryanair, and they do indeed ban crackers, but we went to Berlin by Buzz, who ban crackers as well.