So you're about to head to Germany for a few days of meetings. All your bags are packed, you're ready to go. You're standing there outside your door. And you realize: you have no idea what Germany is like.

Sure, you know where you're staying. Maybe you've got a guidebook that says where to visit if you manage to scrape together a few hours of sightseeing. But what's Germany really like? More practically:

How should you greet your business partners?

If you're invited to someone's house, should you be on time? What sort of gift should you bring? If flowers are OK, what kinds of flowers are appropriate--or inappropriate? Should you bring an odd number of flowers or an even number?

Are there any special considerations for female travelers?
Or female business associates?

What do the electrical outlets look like?

If you order some Schweinebraten, what are they going to look like?


Germany: Business Traveler's Passport is an iPhone app for business travelers. It contains a few hundred pages of information on Germany, focusing on areas of particular concern to the business traveler. While it does contain a small amount of information on hotels and sightseeing opportunities, these sections are intentionally light. Instead, it has entire sections of information on:

• Germany Basics: A brief history of Germany, with some background and historical highlights.
• Country Facts: demographics and other statistical data.
• Doing Business: Greetings & courtesies, meeting protocol, business attire, business entertaining, etc.

• Women: As travelers, are there any special considerations in Germany? As a businesswoman, are any extra measures needed? How are German women treated in their own country?

• Money: What does the money look like? How much should different service people be tipped, if at all?

• Travel: Visa info, embassy & consulate locations, departure formalities, electrical system, etc.
• Safety: Emergency numbers, notes on street crime, health & medical care

• Points of Interest: Some interesting museums and cultural sites, in case there's time in between meetings.

• City Views: Background on Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, with a handful of hotel descriptions.
• Telephone System: The subtleties of dialing from & to Germany. There's even a section on how to use the different German pay phones.

• Culture: A huge section, with topics on gift giving for personal & business occasions, German holidays & festivals, cultural stereotypes, religion, sports, and superstitions.

• Food and Recipes: Descriptions of common German foods, along with recipes for several dishes, including Zwiebelkuchen, Kartoffelsuppe, LeberknödelSuppe, Eisbein, Sauerbraten, Apfel-Rotkohl, and Apfelstrudel.

• Terms Dictionary: Over 100 words & phrases translated into German, with audio recordings of each phrase said aloud.

Navigation
Navigation is fairly straightforward. The chapters are broken out as tappable sections. A closed book indicates the section hasn't been read yet; an open book indicates that it's been read. So if you'd like to read it straight through, cover-to-cover, you can do so.


Buttons at the bottom also bring up the Bookmarks, Settings, and About screens. A tap on the Travel chapter brings up the sections within that chapter:


Within Electrical, we can see the voltage, along with a basic line drawing of the electrical plugs & outlets commonly found in the country. It's one thing to know that the outlets will provide a certain voltage type, it's quite another to see exactly what the outlets will look like.



Once we're reading text, there are several navigation possibilities. The text can be dragged up & down like you'd expect, but you can also tap on the left or top to scroll up one screen, or tap on the right or bottom to scroll down one screen. The two buttons in the lower left are Show Bookmarks and Add Bookmark, the middle buttons navigate to the Previous/Next Chapters, and the two buttons in the lower right are Search and Change Font Size. A Back button is in the upper left, for returning to the table of contents. There's also a progress bar at the top, along with the current page number.


Font Size
The font size of the text can be changed to be quite small, quite large, or somewhere in between. Reading while riding on the train, for example, is much easier with the larger font size.


Colors
The text & page colors can be chosen among several different combinations. If it's dark and you'd prefer to read white text on a black background, everything is still legible.



Screen Orientation
The screen can be set to display in portrait, landscape, or auto-detect.


Links
Physical addresses, email addresses, URLs, and phone numbers are all linked to the appropriate app. Physical addresses bring up the Maps app, email addresses start the Mail app, phone numbers bring up the Phone app (or an add-as-contact dialog on the iPod touch), and URLs load in Safari.