GERMANY is located in Europe and it has an area of 357,021 square kilometers. It is the 63rd largest country in the world. Two percent of its territory is water and this constitutes part of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea which is one of its northern boundaries along with Denmark. It is bordered on the east by Poland and the Czech Republic, on the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands and on the south by Austria and Switzerland. Its current chancellor is Angela Merkel. The current population is 82.3 million making it the 50th dense country in the world with 230.9 persons per square kilometer. Its current GDP is $2.6 trillion, making it the third largest country in the world while its GDP per capita is $35,072. Some 6,000 companies in Germany with a total workforce of about one million workers are financed by private equity. As of this writing, there are about 600 private equity firms in Germany, a relative increase of 200 from the same period of January to August last year. The funds come from banks, insurance companies and of course, pension funds. For the second quarter of this year alone, private equities invested $1.3 billion and the total gross income raked in $1.9 billion making the net income of private equities from January to March 2007 about half a billion dollars.

Taxation in Germany is more favorable than other members of the European Union so it is sound to invest here than in any other European country. But since Germany uses German as its official language, one needs to hire a tax advisor when you invest in business or real estate here.

To do this, one must certainly have an advantage if he or she has learned German. For that, there are lots of language schools in Germany which offer crash courses in acquiring German as a second language. A language program can be divided into three phases – beginner, intermediate and advanced. Each of these programs lasts a semester. In the beginner’s program, an adult class usually consists of ten persons. The student is usually billeted to a German family where he or she will go with members of that family in their day-to-day lives. Classes are usually held Mondays to Fridays and weekends are reserved for excursions which will be organized by your host family. The language school pays for the expenses of these trips because this is already part of your tuition package.

The purpose of these trips, aside from being entertaining, is to immerse you in the German heartland where no tourists go. It is there where you must eavesdrop with Germans conversing with each other. Try to discern whether you’ve caught and understood the words that they’ve said. If so, then you are really going well in learning a second language. In return, you must also teach your host family your native language because they are also fascinated to learn it. At the language school, there will be daily recitations and daily written exercises and each of these activities increase in length as the lessons become more complex.