Dinkelsbühl

Cool names for towns hey? We visited some towns on the Romantische Straße (Romantic Road) tourist route today. Dinkelsbühl is one of the best preserved medieval towns in Germany. We followed the city calls around past a number of the watch towers through into the city centre. More of the same in Feuchtwangen.

As we left Feuchtwangen we noticed school must have been in recess and there were a lot of teenage children smoking. Whilst we were stopped for groceries on the way home, I noticed a rather odd billboard advertisement for cigarettes. This caused me to look up WHO prevalence of smoking to discover than 32% of the population over the age of 15 smoke! It is even higher than Italy and France, and in those two countries we though we would be suffering from nicotine withdrawal by the time we got home from passive smoking. By contrast. Australia is 16%. Here's hoping Germany's health care system is indeed fabulous!

We found eating outside in lovely weather in France and Italy to be almost impossible if we were not prepared to be shrouded in smoke. Australia should be proud of its tough legislative stance on cigarette advertising, sales restrictions and smoking in public places.Read more