When it comes to making sweet, sweet love, men and women from the Teutonic north are -- it seems -- not as needy as their European neighbors in the south, according to a survey by the consumer group GfK in Nuremberg.

One in every five of the 916 Germans surveyed said they are satisfied if they have sex less than once a week. A full 28 percent think that once a week is good enough. And although 37 percent say they need a little lovin' twice a week, they pale in comparison to the 18,000 other people surveyed in the rest of Europe and the United States. One in two outside Germany needs it at least twice a week.

So what does this tell us? It could tell us that the Germans are merely more truthful when it comes to answering sex survey questions. One in every four Greeks, for example, say they aren't satisfied unless they have sex at least five times a week -- something anyone who's lived through a sweltering summer in a country with more than its fair share of malfunctioning air conditioning systems finds hard to believe.

But, if taken with another nugget of data provided by the GfK researchers, the need for less sex is quite simple. Like the Dutch and the Belgians, Germans don't think much of their domestic lovers. Only 15 percent say the best sex to be had is in-country.

The overwhelming majority believe Italy is the place for foreign affairs. And 69 percent of the Italians, by the way, agree.