Today was a somewhat relaxed day at the office. I took the train to the office with one of my US colleagues. She leaves tomorrow morning to go home. This was her first international trip and she was very nervous. She accomplished a lot while she was here and even seems like she might want to come back sometime.
I was invited to the "grill store" by my German colleagues. I didn't know what to expect, especially when we were driving down some narrow streets that continued to get smaller as we went on. We eventually ended up in an old factory district and turned into what ended up being the parking lot through a very narrow gate in a brick wall.
The grill store is a large shop dedicated entirely to grills and supplies for grilling. They had probably 50-60 different grills for sale. More accessories than you could every use. Books describing every grilling technique known to man. And they even offered in store grilling classes. Amazing!
After our adventure to the grill store, Stefan, Constantin and I walked to the cafeteria. It's finally a very comfortable 80 degrees with a cool breeze and almost no humidity. We chatted about a variety of topics and then strolled back to the office to close out the afternoon.
George wanted to join me for the US 9am call (which happens at 3pm daily here). I met him at the elevator lobby, since the floor I'm working on is secure, and we took up residence in the Taskforce Room which is used for major incident coordination by my German colleagues. Stefan joined up and was happy to show all of the cool technology to George.
Shortly before the call began Stefan indicated he had to leave for an urgent matter. George and I attended the call and when it was over I tracked Stefan down to see what was up. Turns out there were some global concerns that required immediate attention. I gathered the necessary info from Stefan and alerted my US colleagues to the situation to ensure they were fully aware and in motion to take care of their areas. One of their German counterparts came to visit Stefan shortly after that and indicated he was surprised the US folks were ahead of the curve when he contacted them. He said they were already aware and doing what needed to be done. Stefan told him I had been passing information along. He was very appreciative and said he wished it always worked that way.
Once I wrapped all of that up I met George, Amanda and a new colleague from the US, Paula, outside and we all walked to the train together. We met up for dinner at 6:30 along with Lisa who was off in Monheim at a castle all day for a workshop. Tonight we went to the famous Fruh Haus, a traditional German beer garden. I had turkey, but George had the pork knuckle which looked amazing (it's similar to a turkey leg...I'm going to have to go back before I leave).
After that we walked to an Irish pub where, for the first time since I've been here, I found hard cider on the drink menu! We spent several hours there chatting the night away. I ended up back at the hotel at 1am. I took the opportunity to call home and FaceTime with everyone. Now it is well past my bedtime and I'm going to get some sleep. Plans for tomorrow are still up in the air, but I'm sure I'll have fun no mater what I end up doing.
I was invited to the "grill store" by my German colleagues. I didn't know what to expect, especially when we were driving down some narrow streets that continued to get smaller as we went on. We eventually ended up in an old factory district and turned into what ended up being the parking lot through a very narrow gate in a brick wall.
The grill store is a large shop dedicated entirely to grills and supplies for grilling. They had probably 50-60 different grills for sale. More accessories than you could every use. Books describing every grilling technique known to man. And they even offered in store grilling classes. Amazing!
After our adventure to the grill store, Stefan, Constantin and I walked to the cafeteria. It's finally a very comfortable 80 degrees with a cool breeze and almost no humidity. We chatted about a variety of topics and then strolled back to the office to close out the afternoon.
George wanted to join me for the US 9am call (which happens at 3pm daily here). I met him at the elevator lobby, since the floor I'm working on is secure, and we took up residence in the Taskforce Room which is used for major incident coordination by my German colleagues. Stefan joined up and was happy to show all of the cool technology to George.
Shortly before the call began Stefan indicated he had to leave for an urgent matter. George and I attended the call and when it was over I tracked Stefan down to see what was up. Turns out there were some global concerns that required immediate attention. I gathered the necessary info from Stefan and alerted my US colleagues to the situation to ensure they were fully aware and in motion to take care of their areas. One of their German counterparts came to visit Stefan shortly after that and indicated he was surprised the US folks were ahead of the curve when he contacted them. He said they were already aware and doing what needed to be done. Stefan told him I had been passing information along. He was very appreciative and said he wished it always worked that way.
Once I wrapped all of that up I met George, Amanda and a new colleague from the US, Paula, outside and we all walked to the train together. We met up for dinner at 6:30 along with Lisa who was off in Monheim at a castle all day for a workshop. Tonight we went to the famous Fruh Haus, a traditional German beer garden. I had turkey, but George had the pork knuckle which looked amazing (it's similar to a turkey leg...I'm going to have to go back before I leave).
After that we walked to an Irish pub where, for the first time since I've been here, I found hard cider on the drink menu! We spent several hours there chatting the night away. I ended up back at the hotel at 1am. I took the opportunity to call home and FaceTime with everyone. Now it is well past my bedtime and I'm going to get some sleep. Plans for tomorrow are still up in the air, but I'm sure I'll have fun no mater what I end up doing.
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