Springtime for Germany

"This is the not so lonely planet we are living on," explains a character in Donald's recently published travelogue, "Springtime for Germany -- Or How I Learned to Love Lederhosen."

But discerning globetrotters need not despair.

"There is a new frontier," he goes on. "A lost, or rather overlooked horizon; a place that is remaining undiscovered, cloaked in poisonous myth and all but unvisited, as we speak, for over 60 years since it became obscured from the minds of most of the world."

Is that really Germany he's talking about? Initiated readers may be puzzled to hear it described in such terms. But wait, he has a point, doesn't he? It is better than its reputation. In fact....

..."It is a European Shangri-La: a romantic, wooded place, a country of rivers, vineyards, forests, castles, poetry and music...of fast cars, schöne Ladies -- 'ver ze girls are biooodiful.' A country preserved by neglect; ripe and waiting to be revealed again."

Blimey. So why does this much-maligned country get short shrift with travelers, or, in Donald-speak, "chavelers"? Determined to get to the bottom of it, he sets out to discover the real Germany. And guess what? Contrary to popular belief -- at least the one defined by tabloid Britain -- there's more to Deutschland than soccer coaches with mullets, Disney castles and nude bathers. And no, Sturm und Drang don't make hi-fis, and FKK has nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan.

As he scuppers the clichés with the same doggedness he mocks the Germans for, Donald gets to grips with the concepts he feels best sum up the essence of Germany and Germans. In the chapter headed Gemütlichkeit, he snuggles up with the Bavarians at the annual Oktoberfest, heads to Berlin to capture the Zeitgeist, gets the measure of Grossmansucht on Hamburg's Reeperbahn and meets a German stand-up comedian in Schadenfreude.

It proves to be a journey of enlightenment.

"I am inclined to judge the depth of a man's civilization by his opinion of Germany and her culture," he concludes.

DW-WORLD.DE spoke to Ben Donald and asked him why, if Germany's so great, does Britain still harp on about men in socks and sandals, girls with hairy armpits, and of course, David Hasselhof.

Ben Donald: Well, if you're writing a book about Germany you have to use the stereotypes simply because they provide so much material, and humor is a key way of attracting people to a subject. The British do the same with other countries too. The stereotypical battle over the sun loungers is an entirely Anglo-German issue -- Italians wouldn‘t take a blind bit of notice of a towel on a sun lounger, they‘d just sit down and ignore it. The thing is, the English and the Germans are quite similar in their approach to staking out territory and personal privacy.

Ultimately, the book said as much about Brits as it did about Germany.

Good! That‘s how it should be. I wanted to pitch myself as a kind of everyman, and the idea was that the book would show some sort of development from my original position. I couldn‘t start out being a Germanophile. And in the course of the journey, I as the narrator also reveal a great deal about the British.

But there was the assumption that readers would recognize and agree with Britain's stereotypes about Germany.

To go back to the genesis of this book, there's simply nothing in the travel bookshops about Germany, nothing lighthearted, nothing extolling the delights of the German countryside and way of life. Why is that, when there are hundreds about Italy and France and Spain? There's something stopping people in Britain from seeing Germany as a holiday destination and romanticizing a view of Germany.

When I do radio interviews in Britain, the first questions are invariably: Isn't Germany just about sausages and dodgy wine, Volksmusik and Nena? So these stereotypes do still exist -- but they've become more playful, they're not malicious at all. And while German ambassadors to Britain always get involved with debates with the UK tabloids about how they treat Germany, it should be pointed out that the British do this with everyone! We're terrible when it comes to xenophobic tendencies.

In the book I focus on how Germans are extraordinarily introspective and self questioning, and perhaps they just need to see Anglo-German attitudes in the context of British xenophobia towards other countries too. Even when Brits are telling you how much they love France, the wine, the chateaux, their gites and so on, they can't help saying it's just a shame about all the Frenchmen in it. The English view of France, as you see in books such as "A Year in the Merde" by Stephen Clarke, is also very stereotypical.

But Germans might still find the stereotypes offensive...

But what the book does is take these clichés and explode them. There are few Nazi references in it, because I specifically didn't want to write a book only about the war. When I refer to Lebensraum, for example, I explain what it is. I mention Kraft Durch Freude and the Prora resort on Rügen as an example of the socialism aspect we rarely talk about in the context of National Socialism.

I tried to see where the stereotypes are rooted and then to supply a deeper cultural reading. When I wanted to explore -- albeit in a jocular fashion -- where Germany's thing about nudism has its roots, I tied it together with the specifically German interpretation of the hippy movement, the Second World War and Germany's tradition of the Kur [spa] culture. What I did was find plausible explanations as to why these stereotypes emerged in the first place.

You could argue that Germans, who are quite serious, are the antithesis of the Brits, who tend to be relentlessly ironic and supercilious. Is it basically a personality clash?

But they do get on in many areas. Doing business with Germans is an utter pleasure and in many ways we have a lot in common. We actually have many affinities and shared interests.

So might we eventually see a great bond between the two countries?

All the people I speak to one-on-one have brilliant experiences of Germany. But it‘s a question of changing perceptions within the media and the collective nation. In a way, these stereotypes are just too good to give up. A map was drawn in 1945, which was when the media explosion happened, and things became hard to change.

What is your personal favorite part of Germany?

I really love the Baltic Coast, the island of Rügen and also further inland, the Mecklenburgische Seenplatte. I'd also love to go back to Thuringia. Bavaria is probably too overpowering a stereotype for me.