Things I miss from Germany

During a recent visit of my parents' in Germany I realized again that there are a few things that I miss dearly - it is not the German weather, of course.
As all expatriates I miss the variety of breads but I find this tolerable. Other things I find more difficult to bear.
I had the chance to watch the evening news on public television and was really amazed: there were no commercial breaks in between, and sports news and the weather forecast did not take up nearly half of the time (as they do here). And there was more talk about global events and developments than about local affairs (a weakness of the admittedly regional TV3 - the "national" Catalan TV station). [But there are no fees for watching TV here.]
Also, as far as I am aware of the Spanish and Catalan press, there are no publications like "Die Zeit" or "Der Spiegel" here. I can find them on the web, but it is not the same reading from a screen or sitting somewhere comfortably with a printed paper in hand - 3G internet access is still quite expensive...
And then I realized why people are so fascinated by the German Autobahn. There are highways here, too, but they are all toll-roads, the lanes are narrower than those in Germany, and there is no extra side lane in case your car breaks down, etc. All this makes driving in Germany a lot more pleasurable than driving here.[Though car taxes are a lot lower here than in Germany.]
Another thing that I find very disturbing (though I once said I wanted to be positive on this blog) is that here public life virtually shuts down for summer vacation in August. As everybody wants - or does not have a choice but - to have their summer vacation in July and/or August suddenly the mail delivery becomes slower, and certain services are not available until September. All the TV stations put their regular programs on hold, emit even more commercials, and repeat old movies, their own series and other cheap productions from the last 30 years.[A welcome exception from this summer "hibernation": my local public library stays open five days a week, though, which I find more important than the changes to the TV programs.]