School

Schools in Germany are similar to British schools in some ways, but there are also a few differences. For a start German pupils don't have to wear school uniforms - they can wear whatever they like.

Children start going to school at the age of 6. On their first day they are given huge 'Zuckertüten' (sugar cones) that are about 1 metre long and filled with sweets and little toys. These are supposed to give the children a 'sweet start' to their school life. In Germany, primary school is called 'Grunschule' (groond-shooler), and children learn to read, write and do arithmetic. They also learn history, geography, science, music and art. Sport is also important, and some schools even teach foreign languages.

After four years at Grundschule, kids go to secondary school. In Britain we only have to go to school until we are 16, but in Germany everyone stays there until they are 18. Pupils can choose to do A-levels or 3 years of job training. Either way, that's 12 years of school!

Which option would you choose?

Sport

Germany has been very successful in sport over the years, and people like Michael Schumacher, Steffi Graf and Boris Becker are household names throughout the world. It's not surprising that Germany produces so many sports stars - German people love sport, and nearly a third of the population are members of some kind of club or team. More than winning, the Germans strongly believe that simply taking part is important - sport should be for everyone.

Football has always been a popular sport in Germany, and the national team has won the World Cup three times. Germany has also produced a number of great tennis players over the years - Boris Becker won Wimbledon when he was just seventeen. Despite this, football and tennis are not the most popular sports in Germany. The country's favourite sport is swimming, with walking and gymnastics close behind. This supports the idea that sport is for everyone - you need to get 22 people together for a game of football, but anyone can go to their local pool and have a swim.

Extreme sports like mountain biking, surfing and snowboarding are also very popular, with mountain biking the 8th most popular sport in the country: there are certainly plenty of forests to cycle round. With the Alps in the south, a lot of Germans also enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating.

The Youth Games Festival has taken place in Germany every year since 1951. About four million German kids and teenagers take part in this major sporting event.

The Language

Germans speak German, but with different dialects or accents depending on where in the country they come from. This means that someone from northern Germany may find it hard to understand someone from southern Germany. All children learn a standard version of the language called 'High German' in school, but they speak their regional version at home and among friends.

The German alphabet has the same 26 letters as the English alphabet, but people can also combine two letters into one to save space. For example, ue is written ü and ss can sometimes be written as ß. In German, all nouns (dog, hat, tree etc.) start with capital letters, even in the middle of a sentence. This may seem strange to us, but in fact German was spoken long before English, and many English words and rules come from German.

Getting Around

Most German families have a car, but they don't always drive it. This is because Germany has an excellent public transport, with trains going to nearly every town and village. Large cities also have trams, subways, and buses, so you can get just about anywhere using public transport. As in Britain, most towns have a shopping area in the centre where no cars are allowed to drive or park. When they do drive, the Germans drive very fast! They have very large motorways called 'Autobahns' where there is no speed limit.

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