Worth a closer look: Two unusual maps of Germany

Today, we invite you to have a closer look at the various regions of our country. Two unusual maps of Germany are – in our opinion – worth a click.

The Broadband Atlas

Mostly, after our international clients or colleagues who have already travelled or done business in Germany, expressed how they enjoyed their journey, were surprised by the nice landscapes and friendly people and were impressed how well organized things were, we hear them say: “However, the Internet connection was a disaster…“. For years, Germany lagged behind other industrialized nations when it came to high-speed Internet. The reasons for this problem were manifold. The national telecommunication grid was originally entirely state-run. Only in 1995, the privatization really started with the founding of Deutsche Telekom. Certainly, also the federal structure with 16 federal states having their own competences, budgets, interests, played a role. The fact that there is not one big capital city or important industrial center in Germany but many regional centers and that among Germany’s many medium-sized companies, even global players may have their headquarters in small cities or villages, made it difficult to decide where to start with building the necessary infrastructure. This has changed, however, recently, and things are quickly getting better now. With its so called Digital Agenda 2014 - 2017, the Federal Government started the Federal Program for Funding the Roll-Out of Broadband to support the development of broadband throughout Germany, granting high-speed internet access even in rural areas. The overarching objective is that there should be high-speed Internet with at least 1 Gigabit throughout Germany by 2025. And here is where the Broadband Atlas comes into play. If you do not want to wait until 2025 but make sure that the destination in Germany you travel to or plan to make an investment already is equipped with the relevant infrastructure, you may wish to have a closer look at the Broadband Atlas, which allows you to find out the Internet speed at each place in Germany with the help of a map of Germany in different colors and a search function:
https://www.bmvi.de/DE/Themen/Digitales/Breitbandausbau/Breitbandatlas-Karte/start.html. Although the website is currently held in German, you might find some information interesting.

The German Cuisine Atlas

Another more leisure-oriented map of Germany is provided to us by „deutschland.de“, a website co-run by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It invites us on a „culinary tour of Germany“, presenting each of the 16 German federal states with its famous dish and a map of Germany in the middle to help you locate the region: https://www.deutschland.de/en/topic/life/german-cuisine-a-culinary-tour-of-germany?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=august20

We are sure you expected this and we have to admit: there is a lot of sausage among German specialties. But that’s not all! We are proud to see that all four German offices of our firm are present with one delicious dish in this mouth-watering culinary tour: The Black Forest Cake stands for our Freiburg office and, together with the "Maultaschen", a German version of ravioli, for the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, whereas everybody in our Berlin office will certainly agree that the "Currywurst" sausage is amongst the favorites of each true Berliner. The pride of our colleagues in Frankfurt is the so called „green sauce“, to be eaten with potatoes and hardboiled eggs, whereas our Cologne colleagues, unless they are vegetarians, are all fond of „Himmel un‘ Äd“, one of the famous dishes of the cuisine of the Rhineland, which is however too difficult to explain here but best described in the „culinary tour of Germany“. We believe it is worth a look – even if it is only a virtual experience. For the moment, in these strange and difficult times of the Covid-19 pandemic, a virtual culinary tour seems the most appropriate. And you are always invited to come and try the real taste as soon as travelling will become safe again – hopefully soon…