Apparently lists and blogs play well together, so here goes. Actually, first a slight disclaimer: My experience comes from living for two months in Franken (Franconia) - Nürnberg to be specific. While this is legally in Bavaria, I’m led to believe that it’s an important distiction to note that I’m not in Bavaria, but Frrrrrank’n. Anyway..

1. Nachmittagspuase.
   
   After lunch, work stops for a couple of hours. In the theater, rehearsals are normally before lunch and in the evening, which leaves the middle of the day for excellent things like sleeping (or learning music I suppose).
2. Essen
   
   I could easily fill five points with different German Bavarian Frankisch food that I like: Weißwürst, Nürnbergerwürste.. in fact, I could do a list of my favourite five sausages also. Brezen! We’ve learnt to bake our own pretzels (something had to be done - the main pretzel bakery in town is just around the corner) and though we don’t use lye as the professionals do, we’ve got it figured out pretty well, and anyone who visits will get to try some! They are great with sweet mustard and Frischkäse (and Weißwürste!). Döner is also good. They have a mixture of coke and fanta (like we used to do at Sizzler!) and actually sell it under the name mezzo-mix. There is a generic name for the non-coke brand, but I forget what that is.
   
   
3. The U-Bahn.
   
   It’s so quick, regular and reliable - and we live right near it.
4. Kultur.
   
   The Arts are so well funded in comparison to other places, like Australia (though the tax rate is also considerably higher). There are over 100 state-funded opera theatres in Germany, and even small cities have theatres. Nürnberg is by no means a small city - it’s population is around 500,000 (about the size of Canberra) and the metropolitan region is around 1 million, so a little more than half the size of Brisbane - yet, it has a full-time theatre which presents Opera, Ballet and Drama all-year round, including eight new opera productions. Nürnberg also has two professional orchestras - the Symphoniker and the Philharmoniker. The government even has an agency for theatre and television workers in Germany. As my colleague put it - it’s like Opera Australia ringing up Centrelink to find a singer!
5. History.
   
   There is so much history here, and even though it’s almost totally rebuilt, der Altstadt ist sehr schön. We’re looking forward to doing some more travel, to places nearby such as Regensburg which is a well-preserved medieval city (with a working opera theatre!). Nürnberg is of course rather infamous, but along with the interesting recent history, there is much to see and do. Apparently there’s some really special old bridges in town (including one of the oldest suspension bridges in the world), and it’s important to train buffs (have you met a buff train buff?), as it had the first German train line (Nürnberg to Fürth), and the first driverless u-bahn in Germany. It has had some famous citizens too: Dürer, Pachabel, Hans Sachs. Copernicus apparently had his stuff published here first, and Sandra Bullock grew up here and sang in the Children’s Chorus at the Staatstheater Nürnberg (though it would have been a Stadttheater back then). Footsteps indeed.