Michael A good quality steak develops a great intensive flavor if cooked on an open-fire grill. But if you leave it on until it turns dark, German guests will proclaim that the blackened surface causes cancer, send it back to the kitchen, or grudgingly cut around the burnt parts. Interestingly, Americans don't share the same health concerns, and flat-out love their barbecue meat flame-grilled to a point where Germans would consider it burnt.

Angelika We keep discovering new television shows via Netflix streaming ( Rundbrief 12/2010 ), most of which we'd probably never had found out about otherwise. Here's a selection of the craziest shows:

Michael We've been living in San Francisco for 16 years already and know our way around the city pretty well. Every once in a while, we get German visitors who then want to know what to do in the city. We're usually rolling our eyes when they insist on going to the touristy "Fisherman's Wharf" area, but we've given up on lecturing our friends that this is a waste of time. For some reason, "Fisherman's Wharf" is still listed in the mainstream travel guides, and apparently, if you told your friends back home that you were on vacation in San Francisco but didn't go to the tourist area and ate clam chowder soup out of a hollow loaf of sourdough bread, they'd probably think that something is wrong with you. Oh well.

Angelika In our Noe Valley neigborhood, there's a lot of churn these days in terms of stores, since the rents are astronomically high. Many small stores can't make enough revenue to compete. Every time when a place goes out of business, we dread what might replace it. Lately, bank branches and real estate brokers seem to occupy 24th Street in droves. In light of this, I was very pleasantly surprised when the former gift store "Ladybug Ladybug" turned into the tea store "David's Tea" . My Northern-German soul rejoiced!

Michael Today, I'm going to introduce an item you'll probably find on American menus: the so-called Cobb Salad . It's a simple, but quite tasty dish, in a way, it's a pimped-out salad. Along green lettuce leaves, it features crispy fried bacon pieces, slices of chicken meat, and hard-boiled eggs.

Michael Recently, our bank in Germany notified us that they no longer want our money. A new tax law called FATCA , the so-called "Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act", extends the reach of the U.S. tax bureaucracy deeply into Europe, where it, via treaties ratified by European governments, forces banks to report data on accounts owned by U.S. residents back to U.S. tax authorities. Banks in Germany, for example, are obligated to report to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on a regular basis, which U.S. residents have how much money stashed away in foreign accounts, to make sure those investors don't forget to pay their taxes in their country of residence.

Michael Americans are generally more afraid of germs than the average German. You can easily see that here in the U.S., because no one would show up for an event with a cold. Spreading germs is considered to be extremely impolite. Or check out the dispensers with the desinfectant "Purell" in the bathrooms of companies and museums: They clearly spell out "Germophobe" to visiting Germans, who'd rather stay clear of the heavy artillery of products like Lysol or Chlorox.

Michael For decades, I've been accumulating paper books at home. This was especially wasteful with computer books, which were taking up space on my shelves for years to come after I had read only a few relevant pages in them and them put them aside. But thanks to the eBook revolution, which Germany is only beginning to see now with a few years of delay compared to the U.S., I came up with the idea to chop up my entire library, digitize the books by scanning them and put them online for me to read them wherever I might roam. Regardless of whether I'm waiting at the supermarket register or relaxing in a comfy folding chair at the beach, I can always access any of my 450 books and read a few pages if I feel like it.

Michael Over the Christmas holidays, we drove to the ski area Lake Tahoe in terrible weather conditions. Leaving San Francisco in the pouring rain in the morning was only topped by getting into a snow storm on the mountain pass to Truckee at 6000 feet elevation. To prevent vehicles from getting stuck and blocking traffic, the highway patrol stopped every single car and verified if it featured a four wheel drive with snow tires. Lacking that, snow chains were required.

Angelika For several years in a row, there hadn't been a Christmas party at Yahoo. But Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo, didn't mess around and decided that there's going to be a celebration in 2012. Now, organizing a party for that many employees is certainly no easy task. Usually, a whole army of people is involved in preparing for such an event, because you have to find a suitable venue for thousands of employees and their guests.