Visiting Germania

Germania is the old Latin name for what is not Germany and Austria: the German speaking areas if you wish. Historically (at least in recent, centuries long history) they'vebeen very different. One of the things that's interesting about visiting the various parts is that they are, indeed, so different.

For example, Catholic and beer drinking Bavaria is very different from the Lutheran and Protestant north: it's still afault line that ruins through German politics to this day. There's also the effect that you can still see of the difference between West Germany and the depredations of the Communist East. Nowhere is better to see this than Berlin itself, and if you're going to go there then this page of hotels in Berlin actually shows the difference. It's vastly cheaper to stay in hte old East than it is on the Ossi side.

My own recommendation is that anyone who wants to understand the difference between socialism and capitalism visit the place.

Now elsewhere in Germania there is Vienna: the list of hotels in Vienna doesn't show that same difference. There you go for the apotheosis of the bourgeois lifestyle. Cream cakes and kaffeeklatcht: and if you're really lucky, for the New Year's Eve performance of Die Fleidermaus (in English, The Magic Flute).

If it happens that you already speak German, then the same information is available on hotels in Berlin and hotels in Vienna in that language.