Until last month.

Last month I gave a little house and started renovating. Now, you should probably know that I am one of those people who doesn’t have a clue about building. I would have liked to keep it that way, but then some nice people gave me my little house for free, just because they didn’t feel like doing any of the work that it needed. So I grudgingly, hopefully, decided I would try.

Two nil up at half-time – Hamburg were cruising. Playing away to Schalke, the team from northern Germany looked confident with goals coming from a well-worked first goal finished off by forward Marcus Berg and the second from a dipping free-kick from German international Piotr Trochowski.

Schalke keeper Manuel Neuer fished the ball out of the net only for the referee to blow the half-time whistle, leaving the 61,000 sell-out crowd to ponder a likely thrashing over beers and bratwurst.

A thrashing it wasn’t. Schalke staged a comeback and set themselves up to win the match. The first goal came from a cross from the right of the box with forward Kevin Kuranyi beating his marker to head the ball into the goal off the inside of the post.

"Which way is it to the gents, please…?" (Flickr, 0zel)

It would be fair to say that the Germans have a slightly, ahem, different relationship to their… err, bathrooms than we British. Indeed, it’s quite different to the attitudes I’ve encountered in American friends, too. And in France. And Spain. And… well, alright: pretty much anywhere else in the Western World.

What does “different” mean in terms of the little boys’/girls’ room, then? Well, for a start, it means that Germans don’t beat around the bush like I’m doing in calling a shovel a shovel and a toilet a boghole. When a German needs a toilet, he or she will ask for one, generally in somewhat undisguised terminology like “Toilette”, “WC” or “Klo”. This last word, for instance, is perfectly polite, friendly even, but comes directly from the word “Kloake”, or cesspool.

He lurks. He is patient. Praying on naivety, choosing the right moment, he makes him move. He rarely misses an opportunity. You might wish he were not there, but ignoring him doesn’t make him any less real.

The bogeyman is no other than the team people love to hate – Bayern Munich. The Bavarians are adept at snatching titles at the last minute. Ask Leverkusen. Or, for the crowning glory of the bogeyman’s triumphs, ask Schalke.

However, in sixth place, with an indifferent start to the season, Munich are hardly cruising. Dutch coach Louis van Gaal has yet to have the expected impact. A 2-1 away victory this weekend was enough to see off Freiburg, but problems remain.

Fall is here, and I might not have even noticed if it hadn’t been for the Federweißer—a new wine, sold in open bottles mid-fermentation. It’s sweet like apple juice, with a delicious yeasty tone that lingers pleasantly on your tongue after every sip.

We were in a tiny village outside of Mainz when the subject came up. Was there Federweißer already? Or was it too early even for new wine? “Well why don’t we just walk over to the winery and find out,” my friend’s father said—a sentence that made me swoon for small-town Germany once again.

Photo: Flickr, myboeckmann

Just a couple of weeks back on the third of October, Germany celebrated the twentieth year of its reunification; and in November, the coming twentieth anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall will be a further occasion for reflection on the German story – and some more celebrations, of course.

For me, however, one of the more interesting anniversaries will be in 2014, when Deutsche Bahn, Germany’s biggest train operator, celebrates its own twentieth birthday.

German team prior to kick-off in Moscow Photo: picture-alliance

German shouts and celebrations punctuated the night in the frigid Moscow air. A close 1-0 victory had just seen Germany beat Russia in this crucial World Cup qualifier. While the German players exchanged high-fives, Russian heads drooped and the players withdrew into the bowels of the Luzhniki stadium to rue their missed opportunities.

Swiss referee Massimo Busacca denied the Russians a clear cut penalty in the dying minutes of a hard-fought match. In the 88 minute, substitute Arne Friedrich slid into a tackle, taking Bystrov down while the ball bobbled out of play. The referee, despite being only a few meters from the incident, failed to award the spot-kick for the Russians.