The Goings On...

Okay, well I now have a few minutes to actually sit down and type something.  Currently, I am sitting in the airport in Valencia Spain.  Don’t get too excited about hearing stories of Spain unless you want to hear the finer points of tugboat engines and ship firefighting systems.  Because for the time I have been here that is really all I have been doing, morning ‘til night.  We got our work done early though so I am going back to Germany today and when I post this I will be back in Germany.  One thing I will miss from here is the weather.  It is 18 degrees Celsius here, which is about 65 to 70 Fahrenheit.  I would describe this area of Spain to be very much like Arizona.  It is somewhat a desert-style landscape with palm trees and mountains in the area.  The BIG bonus is that they have a very nice body of water nearby, the Mediterranean Sea.  The architecture here is very unique.  I have not been anywhere else that has a similar style.  Some of their more modern buildings are VERY modern and would probably look a bit odd and a little too progressive Euro for most people in the States.  The rest are very boxy, usually earth colors and about 5 to 7 stories tall.  So that is about as detailed a description I can give you unless you want to hear about the boat I was working on.  One final thought however is this…the accent of girls in this country is what I can only describe as…very distracting!  Not to diminish the girls of Germany, but there just is no way to make the German language sound sexy.  It is many things, but one word you will never hear used as an adjective for the German language is sexy.  Speaking of sexy…

 

Update on Kristin

There is still no news with respect to Kristin coming over.  I am pretty sure that we are going to be waiting the full 90 days, which means that she will be coming back on March 17^th.  I have utterly no confidence in anyone to end this sooner.  I made one last email declaration to the company, which was not even responded too.  There is a common saying in business that success has a thousand fathers and failure is an orphan.  This is a big screw up in our company caused by unqualified persons complete lack of planning and understanding of their own city government.  With the aid of hindsight it is very easy to see that this transition only needed planning and someone who knew what was needed.  I was not the first person to come over here and I am astonished that there are no best practices or lessons learned taken from past experiences of others who came before me.  Rest assured, a memo describing my experience (in detail) will be drafted at the end of this assignment.  This will be attached to an officially translated letter to FN city hall. 

So for now, Kristin is spending an extra “summer vacation” in winter at her parent’s house. 

 

Austria-Skiers Paradise

To help fill the weekends, get outside, and burn off some frustration, I have been regularly visiting Austria.  Austria is only about a 30 minute drive from where Kristin and I live here in Germany.  What’s better, it is only an additional 30 minutes from world-class skiing.  Coming from Detroit it is still unimaginable to me that I am in essence driving the distance from Detroit to Flint, but instead of being in Flint, I am in Park City Utah, Whistler Canada, Vail Colorado, etc…  There are literally hundreds of places to ski and all that I have visited are very modern, scenic, and challenging.  In general, they are steeper slopes than what we have in the States.  I would basically rank the European system to be one grade higher than our system in the US.  Basically an easy slope here is a medium in the States, a medium here would be ranked hard there, etc…  It took me a few runs to get a feel for the difference in slope but once I felt comfortable managing it and made some adjustments it was just fine.  It’s more in your head then anything else.  The last two weekends I have gone to a city in Austria called Schruns (pronounced schroons).  The ski area itself is called hochjoch (don’t try). It is a pretty big area with one ski run that takes you 12km (8 miles) from the very top of the mountain at about 7000 feet to the very bottom. The runs are one black to two red (so pretty steep).  Because it is very steep you are really pushing your legs hard to turn at higher speeds and to keep control of your speed.  By the bottom of the hill you are sweating.  I did this run three times in row two weeks ago and even with the 15 to 20 minute ride back to the top; I was shaking at the end of the third run.  It was AWESOME!  Last weekend I went with my friend Dominick, his girlfriend Eva, and Dominick’s other friend Clemons.  Eva started the morning in ski school and came out just fine if perhaps a bit on the cautious side.  I think Kristin and her will make great ski buddies as they both have about the same temperament for skiing.  While Eva was in the class, we three boys took turns wearing a helmet that had a camera connected to it.  Dominick normally uses this for skydiving but adapted it for skiing.  So with this helmet we could each play cinematographer following one another or going ahead and watching the others ski by.  I am going to get a copy of the footage so that I can edit it to music and so on.  This is another great way to kill some time.  It was actually a lot of fun but the problem is that when you start to get really fast and go onto more difficult hills it’s hard to keep watching the person you are filming and not looking where you yourself are going! 

When you are done skiing for the day in Austria most people sit at an outdoor bar and drink various drinks most of which have schnapps as the main ingredient.  They are quite strong but quite good and nice relaxing way to discuss the day, enjoy the view, and soak up what’s left of the sunlight.  I plan to go back again this weekend, and probably every weekend as long as there is snow on the ground.  It certainly beats running on a treadmill at the gym and once I am back home in the States, I know I will miss the skiing a lot! 

Just for the record, there is skiing relatively close by in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy.  Germany is okay but the mountains are not as big.  Italy I have not tried due to the distance (it’s close but not a day drive).  And Switzerland is just too damn expensive.   I am sure I will get over there just to say I did it, but I really can’t justify the cost.  Lunch on an Austrian mountain is about 10euros.   You are paying more than double in Switzerland.

 

A German Displaying Emotion at Work????  What Next?

Yes, that is right!  I witnessed a sight I think is more rare than the passing of Haley’s Comet.  I really hesitate to complain about the way guys in the office act.  They never get high or low, angry or sad, just a very even slightly above average attitude day in and day out.  Even when things are very wrong or they get frustrated, they never really show it.  They just continue on.  What they think in their heads I have no idea, but if they are mad, they have a great poker face.  I wear my emotions right on my sleeve usually so I am definitely a black sheep over here in this regard.  But their consistency in staying middle kind of keeps me a little mellower.  But I have to say that it was nice to see someone get a little pissed off just to show me that some of them have the potential to do it.   This person basically has accumulated over 600 FAKO hours, which are basically overtime that the company pays you by allowing you to take that time off. Any amount of time worked in the day over 7.5 hours goes into this account.  So basically this guy was working his nuts off and I think just got a little hot about it.  All the guys in the group are very young and on average have probably not worked at MTU more than 2 or 3 years.  I personally don’t understand workaholics who work these kinds of hours and it is a bit more rare here in Germany.  I understand the concept of hard work and you should do your job while at work.  But when you run up many hours like that, what are you working for? You might say that you work that hard so that you can get a promotion.  And then what do you get?  You get more work.  And unless they are giving you a 250% raise, you really are not going to get too far from your current lifestyle.  Going from $20K a year to $60K a year will make a HUGE difference.  Going from $60K to $70K will probably be damn close to imperceptible as far as a change in lifestyle.  But I give him credit and wish him luck.  I was just happy for the change of pace where it was someone else who was getting really pissed off at work!