Are curtains out of fashion in Germany?

.....and Italy still has no root beer!

You know what people do behind curtains, and who wants that happening all over the place.

LOL!!! Oh, Monte... Now Philip, why do you want to cover up all of that pretty lace? I have been known to rig up a bath towel to kinda block some of the sun, streetlight, etc. Those binder clips I carry in my laundry and picnic kits come in very handy (and please don't use a pin to keep any curtains closed!).

Most places I have stayed in have had metal blinds that pull down outside the window with cloth pulls on the inside. Sometimes I let them down all the way and then pull them back up, not enough to lift the bottom up, but enough so the slats separate a little to let some light in in the morning so I don't oversleep.

We don't have curtains at our apt. either, but we aren't a hotel. Some people use blinds or vertical blinds rather than curtains. Have never seen a hotel that didn't have black-out curtains or rolladen, which are the shutters that roll down. I bet your hotel had these, but you didn't know they were there. Some are electric and some you have to raise and lower manually.

I don't remember staying in any hotel in Germany that didn't have curtains, but then again, I wasn't paying attention. As the other posters noted, many private residences use Rolladen (as does my house), which make curtains or outdoor shutters redundant. One of the impressions my mother noted of Hamburg was that all the apartments seemed to display lace curtains. I don't remember seeing this, but that's not the kind of thing I would tend to notice.

They might have had roller shutters but I think I'd have noticed the controls. The places in Berlin and Dusseldorf had opaque plastic blinds that slid across the window from side to side, but didn't cover the whole width and were obviously just to stop direct sunlight shining straight into your eyes.

And I did once stay in a hotel in France that had only net curtains but did have traditional shutters. Only problem was nobody looked to have closed them for years, so when I pulled them inwards from being against the wall a huge amount of accumulated bird droppings and other rubbish fell down into the street! I just hope I didn't hit anyone.

Curtains for private residences in Germany aren't as common in the US, because of the metal outside "shutters" (a roll-down contraption) that many places have. So as a result what you do get for curtains are more decorative than light-blocking. When I went curtain shopping when I got here, at most stores I only had a handful of options for actual light-blocking curtains, while there were hundreds of gauzy or lacey curtains. Unfortunately I only have the metal blinds in a couple of my rooms. And I didn't like the ugly privacy curtains the stores had. So I went German and got gauzy curtains anyway and while I think they're good enough for privacy (if the lights aren't on) they aren't light blocking. I've learned to sleep anyway. Many of my neighbors do not have any curtains OR the metal blinds. Let's just say I've seen more of them than I need to. Germans aren't particularly concerned with someone glimpsing them naked. But that's all related to living here. I've never been to a hotel that didn't have "real" i.e. light-blocking curtains but I tend to stay in actual hotels as opposed to pensions/B&Bs which may be the difference.