As the Germans struggled with GM and the USA to save Opel with, it seems, a successful deal with Canadian car parts maker Magna International done at the death, another tragedy has beset the German economy – the world’s largest beer mat maker with a 75% global share is going bust.

The reason seems to be industry consolidation, cutbacks in advertising because of the GFC and people more inclined to cry into their beer at home rather than enjoy their beer in company down at the local.

Still the US operation is unaffected according to this article whence the image comes.

These events led me to reflect on certain fragilities in the German economy evident on our trip to Europe last year. I guess we saw what most tourists see, but much that we saw seemed to depend distinctly on discretionary expenditure. With the GFC I wondered how well some of the enterprises we saw were doing now.

This post is not so much an analysis of the German economy; rather an excuse to post a few photos from the trip. By way of explanation, four siblings from my family plus partners enjoyed a riverboat cruise down the Rhine, with side trips, following which some of us spent some time in Germany, not all in the same places.

One of the absolute delights of the German stay was the Steiff display centre near Ulm in Southern Germany. One of the early female entrepreneurs, Margarite Steiff set up a felt toy factory in 1880 and made what is claimed to be the world’s first soft toy. Apparently they recently tried making the toys in China, but it just wasn’t successful, so they repatriated the operation. I suspect the German cultural content was simply too high.

This friendly fellah is there to greet the Australian traveller in the foyer:

There was an exhibition with a reasonable entry charge covering four flours. This was a favourite:

The exhibition included many scenes, domestic and wild.

Such quality is expensive. Lord knows how much you would pay for toys of the kind shown above. In the shop the cheapest soft toy big enough for a young child to cuddle would set you back about €45. We bought a cup of coffee and escaped. I wonder how well they are doing this year.

Exhibit 2 is a place we went to in a trip to the Black Forest. The main purpose was to visit a museum made up of old peasant houses. We went through one built in 1498, then a mill, still working, powered by a stream. From there we walked past a small field with a mob of plastic cows, across a stream to partake of coffee and cake in a shop next to this:

There were clocks galore, large and small, plus Steiff toys, all designed to relieve mostly American tourists if our boat was any guide of their money:

Again we escaped with a coffee. I didn’t price any of the clocks, partly because i was obsessed with finding the Mens, which wasn’t as straightforward as it looked.

At the other end of Germany there is another forest area at a place called Seiffen in the Erzgebirge Mountains near the Czech border, said to be the Christmas craft capital of Germany. It was once a mining area, but now that the mines are finished the locals have turned to wood carving (please note, Barnaby Joyce!) OK, the wood carving tradition probably predates the end of the mining. My elder brother and his wife spent a few days there. Here is a small example of the figurines made in the area:

Again the stuff is expensive. My wife and I saw a shop selling these figurines in Bamberg, a World heritage city not smashed in the war and not entirely overrun by tourists. We were tempted to buy and would have had to spend about €50 per item, but our host was in a hurry. Here’s my pic of the pics of Bamberg:

The Rhine cruise included a trip to Heidelberg, where the castle is a prime attraction. Although late in the season the place was swarming with tourists:

Notice one tourist in a kangaroo skin hat, no doubt an Australian. Notice also some scaffolding in the background. Everywhere old buildings and structures are being rebuilt and repaired. Much of the damage in this case was caused by the French, who had the habit of smashing things and burning cities on the way through. This is evidence of their handiwork from the 17th century:

The city itself, one of the many smallish but nice sized cities all over Germany, was quite attractive:

We were told they were visited by 4 million tourists per year. Again one wonders how many they are getting this year. After leaving the Schloß we walked through the town down what was the longest city mall in either Europe or the world, had a look at some exhibitions in the library of the old university, crossed the river via the far bridge in the photo, walked back along the Philosophers’ Way which you can see as a line about half way up the mountain, crossed over the near bridge and had a coffee in time to catch the bus back to the boat.

Germany struck me as being a bit like an historical theme park. Huge amounts of effort have gone into restoration. This was very noticeable in Nuremberg, where street scapes have been re-created and wrecked churches rebuilt. Nuremberg, like Dresden, was pretty much smashed towards the end of the war for no good military purpose. It seems they missed the Schloß, where we had a guided tour of the residence (no photos allowed on pain of death!) The tour group was fully subscribed, although on a work-day Tuesday, mostly by Germans. In early October the autumn colours were to die for, this one taken from the tower:

There are many museums in Nuremberg, notably the massive Nuremberg Nazi Museum, shown here looking across the lake from a position near where Hitler addressed the crowd during the Nazi rally in 1936 (not very photogenic).

Our host grew up in Nuremberg and used to swim in the lake a a kid after the war. We spent one very sobering afternoon in the museum.

A different kind of museum was the musical instruments museum in Rüdesheim am Rhein, part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site:

The museum had many wondrous instruments, for example:

The final exhibit is the magnificent Cologne Cathedral. I’ll never forget how it’s floodlit shape loomed over us as we came in to dock by the bridge nearby in the early evening.

Again note the scaffolding. Work on the building is continuous. We were told that the cathedral has about 20,000 visitors per day and the city 6 million per year. The building with the wave-like roof pattern is the Ludwig Museum of modern art.

Touring and photography can be hard work, especially when you sail through a place like the Rhine Gorge, necessitating attention to the inner person:

I’m the one without a beard. I was on camera duty along with my ‘little’ brother. The time clocks on the cameras record that photos were taken minutes before and after this photo. I won’t show any of the 16 castles that we floated by within about 90 minutes. Just the Loreley:

Here’s the poem. If you look hard, you’ll see that there really isn’t a young woman with hair flowing in the wind near the top of that rock. But if you are looking hard and driving a boat, chances are you’ll hit a rock! They told us that the currents in the channel at that point are in fact quite dangerous.

There were four digital cameras at work on the trip, which means we didn’t miss much of importance. The upside and the downside is that there are about 4,500 other photos where these came from!