Tony Prescott wrote:
>
> David, since I first went to Germany 30 years ago Guten tag has been replaced by Hello!

Actually it is "hallo" :-)

und "auf wiedersehen" ist jetzt "tschüß" !!

My teenage daughter spent all of 2011 there into January 2012 as a high school exchange student and is as a result totally fluent in idiomatic teenage German of the Frankfurt region. She mercilessly corrects my 1980s German.

She was in a country village about 40kms from Frankfurt. I went there in November as she was running in the Frankfurt Marathon and her birthday was the same week.

I went all over the marathon course by tram, to take photos of her running, it was very convenient how the No 11 tram especially ran down the same road as many kms of the marathon so I could hop on and off trams to get ahead of her for the next photo. It was on this route that I was twice asked for directions (auf Deutsch) and was able to reply (auf Deutsch) as I had seen the places asked for while going past on the tram :-)

The trams were very new three-section Flexctys like Melbourne is about to get.

We also went to Stuttgart and its amazing light rail system and Solingen for the trolley buses. Don't get me started on the 300 kmh ICE trains we used to get between these places. Just WOW.

Tschüß!

david