Germany has one of the highest standards of living anywhere on this planet. It's rather densely populated. Despite it being only about a fifth the size of Texas or something, there are about 82 million Germans living inside. Lots of USAmericans fail to notice that and they stick to the absurd belief that "Since you're from Germany, you must know my aunt Edna from Ramstein".

We (I'm German) export lots of cars, machines, instruments, steam turbines, power metal, things and stuff into the rest of the world. Actually, we're the biggest exporting country of all. Germany arguably has the world's best educational system, one of the best social systems and one of the most smoothly-working functional democracies. Our power grid is also the most reliable in the world.

Note that we do all that mainly to compensate for our troublesome past. If you're a foreigner, the best thing you can say to a German is "of course you're civilised, and we don't consider you a threat". That will make him thoroughly happy. If you want to say something positive about German music, please restrict your opinions to harmless acts such as Sasha, The Scorpions or German hip-hoppers. Overloud praise of bands such as Rammstein will only send us brooding about whether foreigners liking their dark, clichéd image or ridiculously 'teutonic' vocals do any good to Germany's overseas reputation.