About this time last Sunday, I was racing around my flat getting ready for a business trip. Despite my preparation lists that I had made, I had procrastinated just a wee bit. Thus, I was feeling some pressure to get everything done before my colleague arrived to pick me up and drive us to Flensburg.
It was a warm day, so I had a pretty good sweat going as I mopped the floors one last time (to ensure my colleague saw a tidy flat) and double-checked to confirm that my suitcase contained enough clothes for the week, and that my backpack had all my stuff. Due to travel constraints within our company, I have not done business travel with any regularity in quite some time, and I was feeling a little out of practice.
But I felt excited. I was ready to get on the road again.
The purpose of the trip was to host our Chinese customer at our German repair partner. The customer would provide technical training to the repair team, the supply chain representative would help get the materials and ordering system process set up, and my colleague and I would be holding everything together, including setting up the overall after sales process with the customer and the partner. I knew it would be a pretty intensive few days, but first, we had to get to the repair site in Flensburg.
My Austrian colleague had departed his house early Sunday morning, so had already driven for six hours before arriving at my place. When he arrived, I made us a couple of espressos and we talked about the upcoming fun we were about to have. My colleague and I have worked together a lot over the past years, but as our company set up tends to isolate us, we had not seen each other face to face in four or five years. It was good to see him again.
I was excited about the next few days, and what that would bring, but I was also really enthusiastic about traveling through Germany by car. I have no license, so am unable to drive in the country, and as much as I enjoy the train service, my opportunities to ride in a car are rather limited.
There is nothing particularly interesting about the landscape between Frankfurt and our destination six hours north. Flensburg is the most northern city in the country, about four miles from the Danish border. Still, there is always something to look at when sitting the passenger seat of the car. I tend to always play the famous track by Kraftwerk in my head when riding in a car in Germany, which, as I have mentioned, is rather infrequent.
Fortunately, traffic was not too heavy, and we drove north with sunny skies. After a couple of hours, we stopped for our first coffee and ciggy break. We both commented on our appreciation for how much rest stops have progressed in the past decades. In the past, one might encounter a really unpleasant restroom facility, along with some antiquated vending machines. Now days, there is a proper little self serve cafe, clean restrooms (and hell yes, I gladly pay a euro for their upkeep), and best of all, a proper espresso bar.
The temperatures were steadily dropping over the course of the afternoon, and this was also welcome. I am really ready for autumn to come on strong.
Our second stop was just before Hamburg; the coffee was still good, the temperature delightfully cool, and it was a decent way to spend an afternoon, albeit it that the travel requirement meant that the weekend was cut short.
Although we chatted for most of the drive about various topics, we did have some lull in conversation, during which time I played the license plate game. As a child traveling across the states by car on family vacations, I would always look for other license plates from out of state. For example, if we were in Wyoming, it would be neat to see a license plate from somewhere like Vermont, just because of the distance.
My version of the game in Germany is slightly different, although I did enjoy seeing several other plates from other EU countries. In Germany, the license plate format shows which city or district the car is registered in, and obviously the largest cities only have one letter: F for Frankfurt, B for Berlin, K for Köln, etc. What was not so clear to me are the codes for the other, smaller districts. I just read (five seconds ago) that the smaller the district, the more letters are used. Thus, a large city like Berlin has a one letter code, while a small district will likely have three letters, like MTK (Main-Taunus-Kreis, which is part of the Frankfurt metro area, but contains nine little towns, all to the west of Frankfurt.
At any rate, I quickly discovered that I did not know too many of the districts, but reminded myself that once, when traveling with some German friends about 10 years ago, we had played the same game, and they did not know that many districts, either. Of course, why would you really need to know each and every district code, outside of that one day in the future when the question pops up during a pub quiz?
Playing the license plate game took my mind off of the numerous questions I had about the upcoming tasks of the project, and was a great way to relax. Furthermore, it distracted me from the stiffness that was setting in to my legs from sitting too long in the car. Just a few days before, I had started a new challenge for leg training, where I do daily squats. With day 1, you start with 50 squats, then increase each day by 5 reps, pausing every fourth day. Then, you jump by 20, and follow that pattern through an entire month. Although I have regularly done leg training over the past months, this new challenge was upping the ante; my legs were certainly feeling it, and as we got closer and closer to Flensburg, I was more and more ready to get there so I could have a chance to loosen up.
Indeed, we arrived to Flensburg around 8pm. We checked into our hotel, and I phoned my grandmother to wish her a happy 103 birthday, then we grabbed a quick dinner at cafe. It had been a long day for me, and even longer for my colleague, so we went to bed soon after dinner.
Well, the next few days were long and intense. Anyone who has gone through workshops or had extended business meetings with customers can easily relate. Add in a little bit of a language barrier, and by day's end, you are mentally exhausted.
Thankfully, we were in Flensburg, a nice little city that happens to brew one fantastic beer. By a small stroke of luck, our Chinese customers had brought their wives on the trip, so instead of having to socialize and entertain during the evening, we were left to do our own thing. The customers preferred to do their own thing. I know that there will be other times in the future when this will not be the case, so I enjoyed the down time.
Flensburg sits right at the innermost tip of the fjord (Flensburger Förde), and again, I have to make the comment that you just cannot go wrong with having a city on the water. The waterfront has several little restaurants and cafes, including a local brewery that served great food and beverage. I have known this restaurant since my colleague introduced me to it about seven years ago. Since my last visit to Flensburg was in early 2016, I was feeling long over due.
In fact, we ended up eating their three times during the next few days. As my colleague said at the end of each working day, "Ja, Ich glaub's, wir haben ein Bierchen verdient." (we deserve a beer).
Throughout most of Germany, the weather had turned a lot cooler from the beginning of September, and in Flensburg, being right on the water, we had our share of rain. Each day it would rain for a little bit, then the sun would come out for fifteen minutes, then it would rain again.
Wednesday morning, before we headed to the repair site, we looked at the sunny sky and said, "Today looks like we will avoid any rain."
That was true up until five pm, when we wrapped up our meetings with the repair partner. We had initially planned to stay until Thursday lunchtime before driving back south, but we realized that we had covered all the topics. I will regularly visit Flensburg in the coming months, anyway, so there was no real need to extend our stay. Besides, getting an earlier start on our long drive home was a positive.
First, however, we had our last evening (of the trip) in Flensburg. We decided to walk through the town to look for another place to eat, but when the rain started pounding down (making up for the sunny day), we elected to return one last time to the brewery. Afterwards, we stood outside and watched it continue to bucket down, thinking that the rain might let up, allowing us to get back to the parking garage 10 minutes away. In the end, we sucked it up, got soaked, and cursed whoever said something like "run between the rain drops."
We had parked in the garage of the shopping center, which was at the other end of the town where our restaurant was located. Dripping wet, we entered the shopping center to see if there was a cafe that served espresso. A hot beverage sounded like a good idea, but alas, Flensburg shuts down around 8pm. The shopping mall was not huge by any means, but it did have two cafes, both of which were closing just as we walked up to them. As a last resort, I let my colleague talk me into going to the McDonald's ("Bryan, the McCafe does ok in a pinch.")
Well, either the employee did not know what he was doing, or it wasn't a McCafe. I am not really sure what a McCafe is anyway, but no matter. It was simply McShit.
Yes, I can be a bit of a coffee snob, and the fact is, when espresso is not done right, it tastes horrible. I should have known better and simply skipped the coffee, but hey ho. At least the beer we had consumed over the past days had been exceptional.
Thursday morning, the rain continued, which made our departure from Flensburg a little more tedious. No one likes to drive in a rainstorm, and certainly not for six hours, but by mid-morning, the rain had subsided. Unfortunately, we encountered some hefty traffic, delaying us by about an hour. Thankfully, the espresso bars at the rest stops were functioning well, and we arrived back to Frankfurt around 5pm. My colleague did not stick around, as he still had another long drive ahead of him.
All in all, the week had gone pretty well. I was glad to be back at home, and spent a couple of hours at the pub catching up on local stuff with friends I had not seen in a few days. A lot can happen in Bornheim, you know. Sometimes if you blink, you miss it.
Friday was a normal home office work day for me, and like usual, I took time in the afternoon to skype with my father, who had just gotten back from a trip to Alaska. I was glad to catch up with him and hear how much he enjoyed seeing a part of the world he had never been to before.
Now, it is Sunday afternoon, and I am enjoying the last bit of a two day weekend. The cool temperatures are settling in nicely, I am getting the daily leg routine in with fervor (it feels so good when I am done), and the working week will be here soon enough. My beer bottle may not make such a cool sound when I open it, but that's ok. I'll get back up to have a Flens soon enough.
Plop.
see you out there
bryan
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