germany

Germany likes to call itself the "Land of Ideas" - and over the centuries it has certainly had plenty of them. It was Germans who invented the aspirin, the airship, the printing press and the diesel engine.

But Germany has surely never produced anything quite as weird as the automated restaurant.

I say "restaurant" - but it actually looks more like a rollercoaster, with long metal tracks criss-crossing the dining area.

The tracks run all the way from the kitchen, high up in the roof, down to the tables, twisting and turning as they go. And down the tracks - in little pots with wheels fixed to the bottom - speeds food.

The German discount supermarket chain Lidl has been accused of spying on its employees, including recording how many times they went to the toilet as well as details about their love lives, personal finances and menstrual cycles.

An investigation by the German news magazine Stern uncovered an extensive espionage system in its shops across Germany. It obtained hundreds of pages of documents gathered by detectives allegedly employed by the chain to find out about its staff. The surveillance took place via mini-video cameras installed by detectives. The official reason given to store managers was to reduce shoplifting.

This bunker was built in Germany in the sixties in the 20th century. It was designed to be a refuge for the ruling elite in the case of a nuclear war. It was near Bonn, and the tunnel system consisted of a total length of 17 km.

Germany and beer go together like Porsches and the autobahn, but health-conscious residents are turning from the country's traditional beverage in favor of juices and bottled water, sending suds sales down to the lowest levels in 15 years.

According to a government report released Tuesday, the amount of beer sold in Germany fell to the lowest sales figure since 1993 — dropping by 2.7 percent in 2007 to 22 billion pints, down 612 million pints from 2006.

The Federal Statistics Office said the drop in beer sales came as the demand for beer mixed with fruit juices, soft drinks and other nonalcoholic beverages rose 18.1 percent from 2006 to 2007, with some 887 million pints consumed by thirsty buyers.

The Church of Scientology has condemned a German newspaper after they published comments comparing Tom Cruise to World War II propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Leading Scientologist Cruise was embarrassed last week after a video of him making top secret religious speech was leaked onto the internet.

The 45-year-old actor delivered the sermon four years ago when he accepted the 'Freedom Medal of Valour' award at an International Association of Scientologists event.

The owner of a small German computer company has fired three non-smoking workers because they were threatening to disturb the peace after they requested a smoke-free environment.

The manager of the 10-person IT company in Buesum, named Thomas J, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper he had fired the trio because their non-smoking was causing disruptions.

Germany introduced non-smoking rules in pubs and restaurants on January 1, but Germans working in small offices are still allowed to smoke.

It’s always been a dream of mine to take a high end sports car out for a cruise on the Autobahn. The bastards in the video below are living my dream. They have 2 BMW M6’s and get to open it up. They hit 194 MPH.

German newspaper Bild claims today that a goal scored by Spanish origin player Mario Gómez in the Bundes-league yesterday was scored with his penis. ‘The first penis goal in the Bundes-league’ says the paper’s front page.

The goal opened the scoring for Vfb Stuttgart who went on to win against Bayern Munich. Perhaps a better description of the goal would be to say it was made with his crutch.

The player said, ‘I scored with a large part, and it hurt me a lot’.

A pair of storks in Brandenburg have found an unlikely home atop this early model Trabant, the infamous East German automobile. The first prototype Trabant, affectionately known throughout Germany as the Trabi, rolled off an assembly line 50 years ago this month.

Via A Welsh View

Passengers on a German train mistook a Halloween reveller dressed up as a gore-covered zombie for a murder victim and called the police.

The 24-year-old man fell into a drunken slumber on his way home from a Halloween party in Hamburg, police in the northern town of Bad Segeberg said on Monday.

Believing his hands and face were smeared with blood, passengers alerted police after getting no response from him.

Police in German had to rescue a motorist after he moved out of the way to allow a police car with flashing lights to pass, and got stuck in setting concrete.

62-year-old Hans-Peter Wagner was driving on the Autobahn A1 near Ratekau in the North of Germany when he saw police flashing to get past him in his rear view mirror.

He instantly made way and pulled over but went straight into a stretch of road that had just been freshly concreted.

One in five Germans would like to have the Berlin Wall back, according to a poll released ahead of the 17th anniversary of German reunification.

Nineteen percent of respondents surveyed said the country was better off while it was divided, while 75 percent said they were glad the Wall that kept easterners captives of the communist bloc for 28 years had fallen.

Remarkably, a full 21 percent of the country's 16.7 million easterners felt nostalgic about the concrete, barbed wire and armed guards that separated them from the west.