Angelika Around the corner from our home is a popular San Francisco recreational area called Dolores Park. Mainly people from the surrounding neighborhoods, like Noe Valley, Castro and the Mission are hanging out there on the weekends.

Michael The history of beer brewing in the United States can be divided up into three distinct periods. Until about 1985, we had the watery age, when all across the country all one could find was the thin, tasteless beer made by the major brewing companies. Joe Schmoe washed down Budweiser or Coors, while European tourists and a few local demanding customers ordered Mexican or Dutch imports like Corona or Heineken. Then, towards the end of the 80ies, a major movement started, and a few rebellious young entrepeneurs began disrupting the beer market by producing so-called microbrews. Tiny breweries, run by dedicated hobbyists, put a lot of love and effort into crafting their own beers, and started selling them to their enthusiastic followers.

Angelika As at every tourist destination, visitors to San Francisco love to check off the usual sightseeing highlights: Golden Gate Bridge, the cable car, Alcatraz, Alamo Square with its neat Victorian houses and of course Fisherman's Wharf, which locals avoid like the plague. There's many places listed in the popular tourist guides which are actually worth visiting, of course, but the city also offers many hidden gems, unexplicably neglected by both tourists and locals alike, although I'd consider them part of the heart and soul of San Francisco. One of these places is the Dogpatch neighborhood, located in the eastern part of town, adjacent to the Bay and between Mariposa and Cesar Chavez Street.

Michael Americans only know about fried eggs for breakfast, it's not widely known to simply scoop egg yolk out a soft-boiled egg directly from the shell. One of the reasons for that is that the major U.S. chicken farms have been struggling for decades with salmonella bacteria contamination, to the point where they've actually given up on battling it. That's why Americans get nervous immediately when they eye chicken products not cooked to the point where no live organism could potentially have survived.

Michael You might have noticed that airlines nowadays seem to keep inventing new sketchy schemes to get their hands on your hard-earned dollars. Most are charging an extra $20 for each piece of checked in luggage one-way now, with the notable exception of Southwest Airlines. If you have to pay, make sure your bags never clock in at more than 50 pounds (23 kg), because it gets really expensive otherwise! Some airlines, like Lufhansa, even weigh your carry-on luggage to make sure it's not over 17 pounds (8kg). At home, there's an easy trick to make sure your luggage doesn't exceed the limits by stepping onto the bathroom scale with your luggage first, then without, and then calculate the difference.

Angelika Netflix ( Rundbrief 12/2010 ) has expanded into the German market recently, and we're curious how well they'll fare over there. Michael has his doubts whether catering to German consumers will be profitable, but we'll see about that. Here in the U.S., watching Netflix is as common as sending email or make a call on a cell phone. If you ask your colleagues about what they did last weekend, there's a good chance they'll say "Watching Netflix".

Michael Every time when I return to the U.S. from a short trip to Germany, I realize there's a lot of subtle cultural differences between the two countries. In this new series, I'm going to take a closer look at them.

Angelika I've always had the impression that the American telephone system has evolved in a piecemeal fashion over the decades, or why is it again that you have to dial 1 before the actual area code? As in Germany, citizens identify themselves with the area code of the city they live in. And in San Francisco, you can even see people wearing t-shirts imprinted with the 415 logo !

Michael Aside from getting your car's smog test done, in the U.S. it's not required to have your motor vehicle inspected by a certified testing center every two years, like in Germany. You can imagine that for this reason it's not uncommon to see clunker cars swooshing down the freeways that make you wonder how long they're still going to last before falling apart. It's quite common to see cars with only one headlight at night, or with two headlights that point in opposite directions, one straight up in the sky, or bouncing off the rearview mirror of the car in front of them, blinding the driver. And while there is regulation on how many decibels of noise a motor vehicle can produce, no official authority ever enforces or even measures that value. Unsurprisingly, many roaring cars and sputtering motocycles are roaming the streets.