Stereotypes are definitely not enough to sum up the country between Flensburg and Passau.

The world's most sophisticated cars - VW, Mercedes, BMW and Porsche - are just as German as the environmental movement and wind power plants.

The year of Germany's European presidency and the G8 summit meeting of the most powerful industrial countries in the Baltic spa of Heiligendamm was a good occasion for the GCB German Convention Bureau to invite meeting and event planners to the "Year of Business & Science", an exciting tour of the breeding grounds of "made in Germany", an encounter with windmills and nanotechnology, Porsche and Max Planck.

Unusual ideas for events, business & science venues and social programmes and core competencies of the cities are now bundled for the first time on a central platform. It's where Europe's number one meeting and congress destination invites you to participate in a drivers' training on the Hockenheimring race track, to galactic events at the Zeiss Planetarium and to the Walk of Technology through Silicon Saxony.

And it's also where meeting and event planners can find researchers and inventors at work and discover that the I-Pod is just as much a product of German thinkers and engineers as the refrigerator and the lightbulb.

The GCB customer journal for the Year of Business & Science is also fresh from the printer's press. The first issue focuses on the Land of Science 2007 and offers meeting and event planners the latest industry news.

Every month, the GCB also publishes a free newsletter featuring inspiring and practical news from meeting destination Germany and the latest information and venues for the "Year of Business & Science".