The oldest man in Germany, Hermann Doernemann, "turned 110 on Tuesday saying the only exercise he ever believed in was walking to the corner shop to buy beer and cigars." He said that if he knew he was going to live this long he would have taken better care of himself. Sounds like a Bob Hope line to me. This reminds me of my grandfather, Paul Schramm. He was about 89 when he died (in early 1979) in Hungary. He went through the whole of that awful last century, finding himself in WW I on the Italian front, then the Communist Revolution of 1919 (he was a with them), then the quasi-fascist regime between the wars, then WW II, then the Commies took over--by then he was an ordinary Social Democrat, but his wing of the party refused to go into a coalition government with the Reds--they arrested him and gave him ten years of hard labor. He made it through all of it, including the 1956 revolution. Then he went to the doctor for a check-up at age 89 (he was healthy), slipped off the couch in the waiting room, boke his hip, and died from complications a few days later. I advise this old German not to go to a doctor.