It’s that time of the year again - hard working people around the globe are going on break to enjoy a few weeks away from home, doing nothing but relaxing and enjoying themselves. After all, vacation time is the only time of the year where you can go wherever you like and do whatever you want, without worrying too much whether other people approve of it.

Or so you thought. Living among German people, things are not so straightforward. When non-German people hear about your vacation plans, the resulting social transaction very often consists of a high-five, followed by something like “enjoy yourself, you lucky bastard”, said with a big smile and no further questioning. German people, on the other hand, do not see any benefit in such an easy-going approach to taking breaks. As with many other areas of life in Germany, making the right decisions about your vacation will either heighten or severely diminish your chances to earn respect from German people and keep up a friendship with them. When it comes to vacations, the sheer number of things that could possibly offend your German acquaintance is so great, getting this one right is even more important than your taste inmusic, housing, transportation, or knowledge of coffee specialities.

The first mistake you probably made is assuming that German people share the same reasoning for going on a vacation as we Auslanders do. You’ve been working your ass off for a year, so it is a no-brainer that you are going to a nice, sunny place somewhere southern, and take it easy for two weeks, right?

Wrong. The type of German people you aspire to blend in with despises the concept of taking a vacation for hedonistic reasons. In order to feel good about spending money on anything other than owning property or their career, there must be a serious cause attached to the expense, like experiencing authentic culture, studying, helping the poor, or self-discovery. Never openly show a carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude about traveling - it will earn you admonishing glances from your German acquaintances and at any further encounters, the conversation will be somewhat reserved and awkward.

When speaking about your vacation, the following words should be avoided at all cost: Sun, beach, cheap flight, restaurant, hotel, Europe, vacation. Yes, vacation should not be used as German people like to use the more pretentious word “travel” for it, because it gives them the air of being a real adventurer tracing the footsteps of Marco Polo. To help you keep up with the impressive stories of your German acquaintances, let us analyze how elite German people “travel”. The most important aspect of your vacation is who you go with. Just going alone would be seen as dishonest conduct, because there is no way your German acquaintances could assess how “important” and “special” your vacation really was - after all, you could make up stories about it or exaggerate the facts, so the German people around you would feel high peer pressure as they are required to top your vacation and anyone else’s by measures of intensity, authenticity, and uniqueness. Therefore, German people usually go on vacation in groups of at least ten people. Usually, there is one “leader” who initiates the whole vacation planning. Often, this “leader” is the lucky offspring of a better-off family who owns some property in another country, where he is allowed to invite some of his friends. Going with a group solves two dilemmas: With everyone being under surveillance 24/7, German people can finally kick back and rest assured no one will enjoy themselves more than they do. Also, staying in a privately owned property is considered vastly superior to a hotel. Only the wrong type of German, or someone who doesn’t have a bunch of “great” friends, would stay in a hotel. Remember, anything that will lessen your stress is a no-no during vacation time.

The leader German person also bears responsibility to choose the right mix of people for the vaca…, sorry, “journey”. For example, there has to be one person who can speak the destination country’s language. Bonus points if that person is also a good barbecue chef. Eating at a restaurant is an inexcusable mishap only the most stuck-up, unromantic, and non-creative person would dare to propose. After all, doing barbecue, even every single day, is one of the most revered activities for German people, as it evokes memories of past summer nights where everybody was sitting around a campfire, next to a body of water, talking about going on vacation together someday to do the exact same thing, only in another country.

Next, there has to be a number of people who are in a complicated relationship. These people are easy to find as most German people below 50 actively seek out to be in complicated relationships. They consider these superior to relaxed, harmonic relationships because they enable them to always remain at the center of the conversation of their peers and to spice up their otherwise mundane daily life. If the vacation leader knows his job well, he will choose two or three couples who either have split up recently but are still hanging out together, or where one has an affair with another person and everybody but the spouse is in on the secret. Bonus points if the love affair happens to be a person who also attends the vacation. Lots of juicy love drama and late-night screaming matches will be the welcomed result. If the leader is in a pinch and no person he knows is in a complicated relationship, his German friends will grasp the danger of the situation quickly and save everybody’s experience by splitting up one day before departure, having a spontaneous coming-out, or contracting a sexually transmitted disease while insisting on trying group sex.

The other uber-important aspect is of course the destination of your vacation. As stated before, any country inside the borders of the European Union will just not cut the mustard. Chances are some of your German acquaintances have visited the place together with their parents when they were children, and therefore are now both bored by the prospect of going there again and, most important, are expected by their peers to do everything differently from their parents, which by the way you are expected to anticipate in anything a younger German person (read: below 45) does. It is also considered very bad eco-quette to go somewhere by plane where you could possibly also go by train or in an ironic, beat-up VW “Bully” bus. The reasoning goes like this: German people, while always eager to save money for investing it into property later, in fact hate nowadays’ cheap airlines to their guts. An old German person on time claimed the increase of flight passengers due to cheap ticket prices to be responsible for most of the CO2 accumulation in the European atmosphere, and therefore German people will only accept another person going by plane if the destination is reasonably far away (bonus “adventure” points if the airline isn’t commonly used everyday, like Iran Air, Air Bagan, or Air Koryo).

In fact, going to a remote, far-away location that cannot be easily traveled to is the most desirable option for German people. When traveling, German people loathe little more than being identified as Germans. Of course, even for uncontacted people like the Yanomamö, spotting a German person is a piece of cake. This has always been a huge source of frustration for any German person, which might explain the slightly bad mood Germans usually are in when abroad. In their constant struggle to become more cosmopolitan, the German person will already have arranged for himself an array of activities that other German people will admire, or better yet, envy him for. The important point is that these activities must be special, edgy, quirky, and zany enough to both surpass those of the German person’s peers and simultaneously divert all inklings of selfish hedonism. To give you some ideas about good destinations and activities to talk about:

Next week I’ll travel to Azerbaijan because I was invited to be a roadie for the Hajibeyov Azerbaijan State Symphony Orchestra who I will accompany on their tour through the Pakistan / Afghanistan border region.

You know me and my friends we are going kayaking on the Utcubamba together with some local Peruvian poppy growers. Who knows - maybe we spontaneously make a quick detour to Colombia to crash with this drug lord we met on Facebook. He seems cool, though!

I’ll go to Australia with a few other girls where we’ll hitchhike around the country and try to get kidnapped on purpose by some sheep herders who we’ll live and work with together for some weeks! It’s totally spontaneous and some guy in Berghain told us it’s really safe!

I am sooo looking forward to my visit of a super-special Thai ‘Wat’ where I will attend an eight-week course on how to cook traditional authentic south-eastern Mongolian food with one hand tied on my back, doing a handstand on a Ukrainian monocycle, using only bird feathers and shoestrings as cooking utensils. That will be soo intense, dude!

If this all sounds too complicated, angst-ridden, or downright dangerous for you to take on, there is one way out of the situation. Just tell your German acquaintances that you decided to stay in Germany this year and do a bike tour through the Uckermarck. Your German acquaintances will be so flattered by your newly found interest in the German countryside and from then on see you as a highly individual, romantic, and artistic being, who will serve well to improve their importance among their ranks. Who knows - you might even earn an invitation to stay at some guys’ parents’ house in Spain, together with some “really lovely” couples…