The Attendborough guide to Germany; sausages, sexual confidence and surprisingly good hip-hop

Population

Germany is Europe's most populous nation, home to about 82 million people. That might be a dreadful squash were it not also one of Europe's biggest countries - and were the birth rate not plummeting. Approximately 160,000 more people die in Germany each year than are born and there are 16.7 million over-65s, though immigration keeps the population pretty constant. As a result of its postwar gastarbeiter (guest worker) recruitment drive, every fifth person now has a "migration background": they or their forebears moved to Germany since 1949. At the last count, around 2.8 million Turks and almost 96,000 Brits were living in Germany, and the average baby could expect to live to 81.

Religion

Officially Christian, with 34% of Germans saying they are Catholic and the same percentage Protestant. There are now just over 104,000 practising Jews out of a total of approximately 240,000 living in Germany, and an estimated 4 million Muslims. Given the main party in the ruling coalition is Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, it is no surprise that the government supports what might be called Christian values. There are big tax breaks for getting married, and there is no legal right to abortion on demand (though in practice, it is unpunishable with a foetus up to 12 weeks). Getting baptised can be an expensive business, as churches are allowed to tax members 8% or 9% of their income tax once they come of age.

Geography

Germany is one of Europe's most beautiful and varied countries, but most Brits are too busy holidaying in France and Spain to have noticed. It has a surprising 1,500 miles of stunning coastline along what we call the Baltic Sea, but which the Germans confusingly refer to as the Ostsee (East Sea). It has numerous lakes, including the popular Bodensee in the south, which Anglophones know as Lake Constance. Then there are the vineyards of the Franconia region of Bavaria, Alpine mountains in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and natural springs around the Black Forest in Baden-Württemberg. Germany also has a lot of neighbours: it borders Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland.

Economy

Bafflingly successful, even to native economists. Initially, the country with the world's fourth largest GDP struggled with the recession like everyone else. Employment figures remained fairly stable, however, and in 2010 Germany enjoyed the largest growth since the country was reunified in 1989. Many attribute this to the family-run companies that specialise in quality engineering, churning out anything from solar power panels to rollercoaster parts. A strong apprenticeship system and a history of guild-based crafts guarantees that Germany's reputation for quality craftsmanship remains unsurpassed. With economic confidence at a high, there has been some disgruntlement with the bailouts of struggling eurozone economies such as those of Greece and Ireland. It's worth bearing in mind, though, that Germans are notoriously thrifty and, until that changes, the country's status as export kings (second only to China) continues to rely on happy shoppers abroad.

Government

Frankly too complicated even for many Germans to get their heads around properly. Parliament is made up of a lower house, the Bundestag, which is voted directly every four years, and an upper house, the Bundesrat - made up of locally elected representatives from the 16 länder, or regions. The Bundestag can cook up new laws, while the Bundesrat can pass or veto them. Just to make things more complicated, there is also not just one but two federal law courts which can put laws up for judicial review. Given this laborious setup, passing laws in Germany takes time - which means politicians think thrice before even considering changing legislation, and German governments tend to be rather stable affairs. It's different at municipal level, and minor laws can vary wildly. Ask the landlord before you light a cigarette in a pub.

Intellectual life

Until a recent law change, students could take as long as they liked to finish a degree, dabbling in whichever subjects they fancied and postponing their exams if they didn't quite feel up to it when the day came. And with negligible tuition fees, who can blame them? This has resulted in swaths of broadly educated individuals who are used to thinking very long and hard about things. Go to a pub with a bunch of Germans, and you are far more likely to talk about the big questions in life than who deserves to get to the next round of The X Factor (or rather, Deutschland Sucht den Superstar). Poets and novelists such as enfants terribles Daniel Kehlmann and Helene Hegemann are more likely to garner column inches than televisual highlights, though the reverence for poets and thinkers that led to the near-deification of Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas et al seems to be on the wane.

Character

Germans can be quite literal, straight-forward people. If you ask if they wouldn't possibly mind moving their bag from that spare train seat, and they would rather not, they will tell you. They are not afraid to interfere in others' business if they feel they know better and do not fear admonishing their fellow citizens, whether for crossing the road on red or daring to talk in the sauna. Most Germans do as they are told, which is why there are no barriers at tube stations, and being caught with no ticket (schwarzfahren) is a big social no-no. They are not prudish or squeamish, and will feel no shame telling you about their durchfall (diarrhoea) or getting their kit off by a lake or even municipal park in summer. They are also dreadful hypochondriacs who place such unshakeable faith in doctors that a quite astonishing 50% of all German GPs fob patients off with placebos, according to a recent study. And yes, they are still punctual. If you are invited to dinner at eight and don't show up until half past, don't blame us if you miss the starter.

Food and drink

The German passion for all things porcine is perhaps only rivalled by Spain - another place where vegetarians are advised to point out they don't eat pork either. Sausages are still a national passion, with each region taking great pride in its own variety, from the faintly obscene Thuringian schlongs to the ketchup-smothered currywursts of Berlin. Though vegetarianism is on the increase, Germans are still not great vegetable eaters, preferring great hits of carbohydrates such as the southern German speciality of spätzle, a sort of worm-like pasta usually smothered in cheese and bacon bits, or huge slabs of cake, enjoyed at all times of day. Asparagus - spargel - is a national passion, and eating it is pretty much compulsory during the Spargelzeit (TV adverts will remind you of the season should you forget). Your average family is probably more likely to have lasagne for tea than white sausage and sauerkraut. One urban myth would have it that Berlin gave the world doner kebabs in much the same way that Brits invented chicken tikka masala. Germany is a paradise for beer drinkers, with each town favouring its own brew. German wine is vastly underrated, particularly Spätburgunder red and Riesling whites.

Love and sex

To understand why Germans are so confident about sex, just look at the top-selling teenage magazine, Bravo. Each week, two young readers (one girl, one boy) are photographed in the buff and interviewed about their love lives, depilatory regime, etc. There is also a legendary agony uncle, Dr Sommer, who answers letters with headlines such as "I'm circumcised and ashamed!" and "My mum caught me masturbating". As a result, sex is not taboo, and the TV presenter Charlotte Roche - who last year offered to sleep with the German president if he didn't sign a law extending nuclear power stations' life - was able to bring out a bestselling novel, Wet Lands, about a teenage girl preoccupied with masturbating with an avocado stone. Brits are often surprised to discover that Germans do not appear to require alcohol to sleep with each other for the first time. German women are legendarily feisty and tend to call the shots in the bedroom. Think the title character in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Marriage of Maria Braun, who, the morning after sleeping with her boss, tells him: "I don't care what people think. I do care what you think. And you're not having an affair with me. I'm having an affair with you." This anything-goes attitude has consequences: apparently Aids/HIV has doubled in the last 10 years.

Entertainment

Germans can be positively neurotic about their reputation as a kulturnation. German cinema used to lead the way in the silent era and, every few years, collective hopes are raised for a return to the golden years. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Oscar-winning The Lives of Others in particular stoked talk of a revival, though anyone who has seen Otto Waalkes' Otto's Eleven, Till Schweiger's Kokowääh or even Von Donnersmarck follow-up The Tourist knows there is no point in getting too excited. Television is still swamped by badly dubbed voiceovers of American sitcoms and carbon-copy reality shows such as Dschungelcamp (I'm a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!) and Deutschland Sucht den Superstar. Cop show Tatort is set in a different German city each week and has become cult viewing for its understated drama. Musically, "big in Germany" is always going to be a mark of mockery in Britain, but German hip-hop is considerably better than its reputation would suggest, and electronic labels such as the Cologne-based Kompakt are respected worldwide. Lily Allen-esque singer Lena won the Eurovision song contest last year and had the country acting like a bunch of 14-year-olds, though sending her to the contest for a second time this year increasingly looks like a bad idea.

History

Everyone knows about German history. But post-1945 (West) Germany has gone through a painful and exemplary period of self-scrutiny, with the Holocaust acknowledged and remembered as an unprecedented crime. And there is much more to German history than the Third Reich: big literary names from Goethe (below) and Schiller through to Thomas Mann, a pantheon of classical composers from Bach and Handel to Beethoven and Wagner, the martial narrative of unification in the 19th century under Bismarck and the postwar economic miracle of the 1950s. And there are always the ancient Frisians and the Saxons, who settled on an obscure, rainy island off the western coast of Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, taking their own peculiar dialect with them.

International relations

Germany has traditionally been the driving force inside the European Union, as befits its status as Europe's biggest, and most economically powerful, state. Typically, you have to add "Franco" when discussing Germany's EU role – as in Franco-German stitch-up. In reality, however, German foreign policy has become less idealistic/integrationist/self-sacrificing in recent years and more hard-headed/self-regarding/get-your-hands-off-our-money. Angela Merkel's decision to bail out the profligate Greeks was wildly unpopular at home. Germany also has closer relations with "mafia state" Russia than any other European power except Berlusconi-land. Bonus points if you can name Germany's lack-lustre foreign minister and summarise what the Americans think of him, according to WikiLeaks. (Guido Westerwelle; vain and incompetent)

This article was amended on 15 -16 March and 4 April 2011. The original stated that Germany is Europe's biggest country; that there are now just over 104,000 Jews living in Germany; that getting baptised is an expensive business, as churches are allowed to tax members 8% or 9% of their income once they come of age; that renouncing one's religion may reduce one's tax bill but it is a deliberately arduous bureaucratic process (this has been removed); that the country's status as export kings is third only to China and the US. These have all been corrected. A reference to abortion has also been clarified. A reference to Grüner Veltliner has been deleted since it is an Austrian grape variety.

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