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‘It was time, the editor told me, for a more modern approach to Germany… The three of us were the backbone of the British press corps. No cliché about Germany left the country without us having given it our seal of approval.’
Laugh-out-loud funny, this is the memorable story of an English journalist’s adventures – including his encounters with women – as he tries to get to grip with the Germans. Facing bankruptcy, Roger is advised by his accountant to make use of a legal loophole: in Germany married couples have their tax bill halved. So the search is on for a German bride. Meanwhile his father, a former bomber pilot and war hero, is also in financial trouble and is threatening to move to Germany and sponge off his son.
The combination of financial, romantic and parental crises sets in train a hilarious romp during which we discover more than we really wanted to about speed-dating and nudist beaches, the British media obsession with Adolf Hitler and how to cheat at the Berlin marathon, curry wurst and stuffed cabbage. Writing incisively and almost without prejudice, Roger Boyes describes the peculiarities of everyday life in Germany.

‘We-have-a-house-in-the-country?’
Lena nodded solemnly. 
‘Where?’ I almost shouted, briefly rattling the table. ‘No, wait, don’t tell me – it’s Todi in Umbria, right? The old manor house, the one with the lemon groves!’
‘Alt-Globnitz.’
‘Alt-Globnitz?’ Suddenly I felt cold.
‘Alt-Globnitz. It’s a really nice place. You will love it.’
In a desperate attempt to save his relationship with girlfriend Lena and take a break from the world of journalism, Germany correspondent Roger Boyes agrees to make a great escape from the easy urban lifestyle of Berlin and decamp to the countryside. Roger has hopes for southern Italy, but Lena has inherited a run-down old schloss in deepest, darkest Brandenburg.
Needing a form of income, they decide to set up a B & B with a British theme. Enter unhelpful Harry and his Trinidadian chef cousin, a mad Scot to advise them on re-branding Brandenburg, some suicidal frogs and a posse of mad tourists. It all culminates, naturally, in a cricket match between the Brits and the Germans on an old Russian minefield. Farce meets romance in this follow-up to the successful A Year in the Scheisse.

I had thought for some time that there must be something funny about Germany because, except for hard-drinking types at the Munich beer festival, I had never heard of anybody going there for a holiday. This was, in my view, the first of two advantages. There are travellers who, when abroad, are delighted to see a fellow countryman. Not I. There are quite enough Englishmen at home without my wanting to run into them abroad.
So Edward Enfield sets off on this enjoyable cycling trip, carrying few preconceptions but plenty of wit. Determining the route he should take from recommendations scrawled on a napkin, he starts by following the undulating ‘Romantic Road’ through the woods and cornfields of Bavaria – closely pursued by fellow countrymen in the form of a television camera crew.
After a solo jaunt around the rural backroads and Mazurian Lakes of Poland, stopping to enjoy the delights of Krakow, it’s on to Austria, where he rides along the pleasant banks of the Danube from Passau to Vienna, taking in castles and baroque churches and sampling splendid wine en route. And, as Edward amply reveals in this charming book, there is no place from which to see a country that is nearly as good as the saddle of a bicycle.