Episode 24: Understanding German License Plates
10. Mar, 2010 
11 Comments
You can tell a lot about a car and driver by knowing how to read their license plate and in this episode of the myGermany podcast, that’s just what I do!
In this video I mention that the, rather than being registered in Federal States (like New York, California, Texas, etc.) German cars are registered at the county level (or something equivalent to a county). The county is annotated on the license plate by the first 1-3 letters on the left side of the plate. The map below shows you the various registration areas and you can see that there are a lot of them!
The game I mention in the video is that you try to guess where the car is from by these first 1-3 letters.
To find out more about the German license plate laws and standards (if you’re really bored or into that kind of thing) you should check out the detailed article at wikipedia.
UPDATE: Thanks to the keen eye of Volker for pointing out my mistaken reading of the “TÜV-Plakate” – the top round seal between the two parts of the license plate.
Also Check the comments for some great input by other listners/viewers.
Is there anything about Germany that you’d like me cover in a video or audio podcast? If so, leave a comment or send me a mail!
Hm, can’t see a video or a link to a video :S
thanks for the head’s up, Gerdoner!
I’m not sure what’s wrong, but all the media on the entire website seems to be down.
I’ve got someone working on it.
And now I have a guilty conscience because I only posted to nag so far (which would be typically German you might say… why post when everything is alright?
)
Keep up the good work 
So just wanted to say I really enjoyed listening to hear what people form other countries think about us Germans
Very nice web site, interesting post, and always interesting to see everyday “German” things from an American perspective.
A little game we Germans like to play is to make up funny alternate meanings for the first characters on license plates. Some are just funny, others can be mean or very bad taste:
For example:
OF (Offenburg): Ohne Führerschein = Without Driver’s License
SFA (Soltau-Fallingbostel, predominantly a rural farming area): Sau Fährt Auto = Pig Driving A Car
WTM (Wittmund): Wir Töten Menschen = We Kill People
EL (Emsland, also very rural): Entwicklungsland = Developing Country
LWL (Ludwigslust, former East Germany): Lauf Wessi, Lauf = Run, West German, Run!
There are dozens of pages on the web where you find more stuff like this
Hi there nice website, I just watched your video and there are 2 little mistakes you made. The first is the 12 stars in the European flag don’t have any meaning beyond symbolizing unity, and you read the TÜV-Plakette wrong. You have to read it like a clock, the number on the 12 o’clock position indicates the month you have to go to renew it.
@Jonas: thanks for the additional information. I love those acronyms and I think that game is great! Very funny (LWL is hilarious!)
@ Volker: excellent corrections! I’ve updated the text of the post. Thanks for keeping me on the right track!
Haha Jonas, those acronyms are awesome, good of you to translate them too! Might start doing that here in the UK from now on, should prove interesting on long journeys, lol.
hey “Number Plates”, I had no idea you could trade number plates in the UK. That’s pretty cool and not at all allowed in Germany.
BTW I think the links from my comments are “nofollow”…I have some plugin for that, sorry.
Now that Germany has won the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, how about a podcast about music in Germany – Trance, pop, jazz, classical, C&W, shlager, etc.
hello Tom, that’s a good idea.
In the earlier podcasts I usually featured a German band, but have stopped doing that because of legal reasons (I don’t want to get sued!), but it would be cool to perhaps do an overview of the German music scene right now.
Thanks for the suggestion!