Sunday, October 5, 2008

The German Tropics

If you have the itch to travel to a warm place outside of Germany in October but want to enjoy all the conveniences of your expat home, consider the Canary Islands.

We spent a week on Gran Canaria - Playa del Ingles to be precise. Although the name translates to "Beach of the Englishman", a more accurate description would be Playa de los Alemanes - "Beach of the Germans". Not once during the whole stay did we encounter one single American tourist. We were mostly surrounded by German retirees.

There are no pictures to document our stay there because a) it was so windy on the beach on a couple of occasions that we worried about sand getting into our cameras and b) clothing was minimal and, at times, optional.

Booking our trip through a discount travel agency online proved to be very frustrating. To make a long story short, be careful to read the "AGBs" (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen) which spell out what you are legally on the hook for. According to this agency, flight information was subject to change and little did we know that change could happen as quickly as 5 minutes after booking online, putting us on a flight arriving at 1am instead of 12pm. Well, after much yelling over the phone and threats of reporting them to the German equivalent of the consumer protection agency and the German Tourism Board, we got the flights we originally requested.

Many of the touristy spots around our hotel offered menus and translations in German first, then in English. We ordered German beer just about everywhere and if we wanted to we could even have our coffee and cake right on the beach. I think we heard more German spoken than Spanish.