Germany

Germany is a great place to be vegan, as it became quite a trend for individuals to be vegan. Therefore a lot of restaurants offering vegan friendly menu options or are even completely vegan. Additional the word “vegan” and its meaning is common to most of the restaurant staff, which makes it really easy to find suitable options or “veganize” your meal. The variety of restaurants differs in each city. In big cities like Berlin you will find plenty of hip vegan hang outs, while in smaller towns it might need a bit of a search to satisfy your taste buds.

Apart from all the restaurants and cute Cafès in Germany, you find amazing so called “Drogeriemarkt” retail stores, I couldn’t find a direct translation for it. It’s kind of “everything in one store” kind of store. You will find cosmetics, health care items, household products and mostly health food items. So you can get your mascara, shampoo, washing liquid, natural “medicine” (as its not a pharmacy and Germany is very strict when it comes to medicine which needs a subscription by a doctor, those medicine you won’t find there), teas, baby diapers, packed healthy cookies, spreads, juices which mostly are either sugar free, gluten free, vegan you name it… and you can print out your pictures of your last travel. They only don’t sell fresh food, everything is packed and usually has a longer shelf life. The most famous and best equipped chain is called DM- Drogerie- Markt https://www.dm.de/  followed by not much less famous and popular stores Rossmann Drogeriemarkt https://www.rossmann.de/einkaufsportal/ and Müller Drogeriemarkt https://www.mueller.de/ .

Well we covered the food section, Germany has to offer much more then that! It’s a general green country with many forests and parks. Local people love to maintain beautiful gardens and generally spend time outdoors. The bicycle culture is big, next to the public transportation. Petrol and also Diesel (which is a big thing in Germany) are expensive, maintaining your car with 2 sets of proper tires (summer and winter) as well as paid parking plays a roll. Apart from the financial point, a lot of people are genially health and environmental conscious and use alternatives whenever possible. Germany is also big when it comes to solar power and sustainable energy. They have huge fields full of solar panels to catch the energy the sun has to offer, windmills on every corner and even water mills to produce green energy. Apart from that the current Chancellor Angela Merkel announced in 2011 that all 17 nuclear power plants will be shut down by 2022. Well done!

Overall Germany is a very vegan friendly and green country. It has 4 seasons summer, autumn, winter and spring, but the winter seems to become longer and colder. It has plenty of history to offer with many castles and museums. The most famous castle might be Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria http://www.neuschwanstein.de/englisch/tourist/ .You will find something to discover in each city.

One note at the end: Germans are not the best English speakers, although they learn it in school, or maybe most of them are just shy to speak. Apart from that, they are a bit too formal sometimes, so they might give you the impression of being a rude.