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I lived in Germany for 6 years, and wrote this summary during the end of my time there. My opinions may be biased, dull or just plain wrong, but at least they are informed. If you don't like 'em, get your own. I'm also a great believer in Ying and Yang. Each downside to living in Germany has its upside, each plus its minus, each glass of pils its sauerkraut. Here's my ranking:

Plus

German beer. Easy one that.
Orderliness. Another cliché but true. Everything and everyone has its place and its rule book, and for a pedantic bastard like myself this is a winner. Except when my neighbours complain that the stairwell has not been cleaned for the sixth time that month. Hell, my own toilet might see a brush once a quarter and it has much more personal significance to me. Still, garbage gets segregated into three streams and everything is recycled, so that's nice.
German cars. BMWs, Audis and Benz's are ten-a-penny, so you can pick up a quality used car regardless of your budget. Because of the rule above, they are almost always in great shape, too. And then there's the.
Autobahn. After five years I still giggle like a schoolgirl when I get to step on the throttle and torch the motorway at 200kph. Overcrowding means this is a rare pleasure, but even regular main roads (which are empty) have a 100kph limit that no-one follows. Try averaging 120kph anywhere else in the world.
Working life (see also the diligence myth). Jobs are for life, everyone is well paid, the state supports you anyway, hours are short and overtime is outlawed (really!). And everyone gets 30 days annual vacation on top of a dozen national holidays. It's just a shame I'm on a UK contract, then.
Quality of life. This is very much open to interpretation, but I value an apartment / public transport system / shower which are well built and which work well. Try finding those three on the same day in the UK.
The Oktoberfest
Bike lanes. They are everywhere in Germany, and I'm not talking about a poxy dotted white line reserving six inches of crowded dual carriageway. These are autobahns for bikes that are wider than your average country lane. You even get a tax break if you ride a bike to work. It's just a shame that they were built for housewives to trundle to the corner shop on, as on anything other than a serious mountain bike you'll soon shake your bike to pieces.
Climate. Call me crazy but I prefer a place which has roasting hot summers followed by snowfalls in winter, rather than drab, grey skies and drizzle 50 weeks a year. Germany might not be Southern California but ain't Manchester either.

Neutral

The German language. A surprise 'neutral', perhaps, for anyone who has suffered through schoolboy German but I'm slowly becoming appreciative. German grammar is ridiculously complicated but once you've sussed it, the rest of the language isn't that hard (in case you are foolish enough to believe me, I got carried away and wrote a primer on the German language). A phrase in German always raises a laugh, and you'll never be understood outside of greater Germany and Ibiza. As 100M people speak German as a first language, you've increased the pool of your potential partners by 50M (admittedly a minute percentage of those will be suitable, but, hey, 50M is a big number). I live with a German partner so I've got to say that.
Rules and regulations. Closely linked to orderliness, above, except that the rule book in Germany covers everything. Things are great when the rules mean you get things your own way, shite when they work against you. Everyone follows The Rules, so you always know where you stand. Overall it's neutral, then.
TV commentary. Granted it's in German which isn't everyone's cup of tea, but at least the Germans are fair. If you've suffered through a sports event with French commentary you'll understand what I mean. I can't judge English commentary fairly, but could see that for a neutral, it would be as bad as the French. The Germans, on the other hand, are candid and more neutral when it comes to sport events - although they can afford to be when you can rightfully expect to win everything. I do have a gripe when the entire German nation latches onto a sport star in an emerging sport, like Boris Becker did for tennis and now Jan Ulrich is doing for cycling. And Michael Schuhmacher is a national hero and he is a grade A wanker.
Attitude to foreigners. Germans think all Englishmen are uncultured lager-louts, which is spot-on. They think the French are pompous, arrogant twats, and Italians are greasy hot-heads. In fact, apart from their opinion of themselves, they have exactly the same stereotypes as we do. For obvious historical reasons I can't enter this point in the plus category.
Food. 24 Nüremberger sausages served with fried potatoes in a frying pan the size of your table next to a stein of pils is a winner. Sauerkraut is a loser. So are leberknödel, schweinehaxe and saumagen. On balance, then, it's neutral.
Customer Service. This simply doesn't exist in Germany. But I'll always take an unpleasant grunt from moustachioed checkout Frau over an asinine 'Have a nice day'. And they don't expect a 15% tip in restaurants for telling you their first name and the details of today's specials.

Minus

General courteousness (lack of). I think German kids somehow missed the universal law of growing up that you got a swipe across the ear each time you forgot your 'please' or 'thank you'. It must be a sign of growing old but I find bad manners totally infuriating. If you let someone into traffic and get a friendly wave in response, you've had a good day. A great day - it just never happens. The only way I can live with this without going nuts is to remember that (a) if no-one does it, my expectation is abnormal, and (b) hand-gestures are a traffic offence, so maybe people are scared to wave should it be misinterpreted (see rule-abiding).
Taxes. The average German pays about half his salary in taxes. That's 50%. Which is a lot. Luckily, I'm on an expat deal so I only ever see the net salary, and working out what the state earns from me is an equation I've stayed clear of for the sake of my sanity..
Always being right. I was once approached in a store for assistance. I pointed out that I, too, was a customer and didn't know where the processed meats were, and was told 'then why are you dressed like that'. I was pushing a shopping cart in a suit and tie, for Christ's sake. This is one example of the German trait of never admitting your mistakes or weaknesses, which I think is mistaken for arrogance. This can be great fun in meetings when you know someone has been talking out of their arse, but most of the time its annoying as hell. If I had a Deutsche Mark for every old lady who has told me whilst jogging "you can't go out dressed like that", I could retire. Although the state would have nicked half, of course.
German radio. It's awful, plain and simple. Most channels are stuck in a kind of mid-80s time-warp with the odd new German pop song thrown in. Which is worse than the most mindless B-side of New Romantic tosh. I honestly hear Dexy's Midnight Runners 'Come on Ilene' at least once a week on the way to work.
Walkers. I'm a mountain biker. Most Germans aren't, especially the elderly who get their exercise 'hiking' from a car park to a nearby restaurant. And because they are always right, they think they have some sort of special right of way, and that somehow 90 kilos of metal and crash-helmeted biker travelling at 30kph is likely to come out of a crash worse than a 50 kilo sack of old blubber and porous bones. I could be persuaded that this has nothing to do with being German but is a general trait of geriatrics. My tip: leave the bike in the basement on national holidays.
Supermarkets. I still have to figure out what The Rule Book is for the shelf stacker in Germany. I think they are sorted alphabetically in medieval German. Anyway, the logic of stacking pickles next to cleaning products will never make sense to me.
The old fart who lives across the road, who "introduced" himself by ordering Petra (my partner) to move her car out of "his" parking space. Foolishly, she had parked in a residential street within three miles of the nearest 'no parking' sign and to compound the error, she left his car trapped in with a mere 10 feet of space on each side. This introductory comment lapsed into a comical discussion about rights of way, private property, and oddly, liability should a loose roof tile becoming dislodged. To make matters worse, he had had a tracheotomy and spoke through a metallic contraption which made him sound like an old-fogey combination of Darth Wader and Steven Hawking. As he was about 80 years old, we would have gladly parked elsewhere had he asked nicely. As it was, it took all the self-discipline I could muster not to lower myself to his level (e.g. "Careful, Grandad, or I'll add to that war wound and have your other tonsil"). I'm not sure if this indicates a tendency for ageism on my part, or if I just have an issue with thick people. Anyway, I'm decided thereafter to blame him in absentia for all manner of little niggles - the small dent that appeared in my car, poor TV reception, rainy Sundays, etc. I'm sure he is in cahoots with our other neighbour who keeps chickens and whose cockerel wakes me at 4:30 every morning. Anyone know where I can get a gun?
Golf. I've just started playing. Or at least trying to. Golf is still stuck with its head up its own pompous ass in Germany, dominated by the over 50s with an ill-fitting garish wardrobe and an oversized Mercedes. They make you pass an exam just to play on a course and that's only after you've dropped a king's ransom for membership into their coffers. Small wonder that Germany has yet to dominate the golfing world.

Other myths and oddities

No sense of humour. In my opinion not true. Naturally a section of the population are sour-faced wankers, but that can be said of any country. Certainly the higher forms of humour (sarcasm and wit) are wasted in Germany. I can explain the myth in that the things we find funny are very different. The best explanation I can think of is that the English wit spends his/her time in the pub insulting one-another, whereas a German with a reputation for being funny will spend his time reciting old jokes. Add in half a dozen pints and it's easy to see how the two don't mix.
Diligence. The German working week is 35 hours. Overtime is forbidden by law. If I'm in the office at 5 O'clock on a Friday, I share the building with a couple of cleaners and the mice. Stories you've heard about institutionalised hard work are complete tripe.
Work/life balance. Germans have a compartmentalised mentality, best demonstrated in that work and play almost never mix. This is very bizarre to a Brit, used to getting out of your head with your work colleagues every Friday and snogging the new bit of skirt from accounts at Christmas. I've only been invited out by locals about half-a-dozen times since moving here, but then maybe they just don't like me. A friend of mine coached a basketball team and it took six months before they invited him to join them for a post-training drink. Go figure.
The "Du/Sie" thing. German has a polite and informal tense. This means that you address family and friends with 'du' and first names. For everyone else, its 'Sie' and Herr This or Frau That. I still can't understand why after 30 years of working together otherwise amicable people have not migrated to a first name basis (believe me that's a real example, not a wisecrack). At least this is dying out in the younger generation. And it can also be fun as a foreigner to deliberately mix things up at work and watch confusion spread.
Dress sense. I could stand outside work on any summer day and take snapshots of the shift staff. Arranged into a coffe-table book, the collection of shirt/shorts/footwear combos would guarantee a stomach laugh, if it doesn't make yours turn. I'm not sure if this is a German thing or just that I work in the sticks.