German soldiers lifting the Polish-German border crossing on 1st September 1939. Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction but with all the internal and external pressures facing the European Union, the Polish parliament’s unanimous vote followed by its 2017 research bureau’s ‘legitimate claims against the Federal Republic of Germany’ for war reparations have to be among the most surreal. No one could have envisaged at the inauguration of what became E.U. with the treaty of

Germany is Europe’s fourth largest producer of wine and not surprisingly the uber sickly sweet varieties famous in the UK like Liebfraumilch and Black Tower are all but unheard of in Germany. The most famous and picturesque wine regions continue to be the Rhineland and the Mosel but wine is produced throughout central and southern Germany; with the most famous varieties of white wine continuing to be Riesling, Silvaner, Mueller Thurgau & Gewuertztraminer, and reds Spaetburgun