Vienna

This weekend I headed east on the trails of Sisi, Mozartkugeln and Wiener Schnitzel.

Late Friday evening I arrived at my friend Lena's place in Vienna. Saturday morning we started our stroll around the city with the Hundertwasser House. Hundertwasser was an artist who liked the unusual and disliked straight forms and lines. The perfect form for him was the circle.

All through the city you could find different kinds of street art:

Dustbin sayings

Metro wall poetry

Next stop was the Stadtpark, but all the fountains and flowers were already gone for wintertime.

Then we marveled at Karl's church on Karl's place before we moved on to Naschmarkt (fresh food market). There we bought fish, olives and nuts.

Sacher Cake from Hotel Sacher

As we walked on, we passed by some monumental buildings housing museums and some little huts that got erected for Christmas Market. In front of the city hall we even encountered the first open Christmas Market with hot wine, punch and all the season's sweets.

Hofburg

Then we crossed the ring road into the centre walking through the castle and found also the shopping streets decorated for Christmas even we still had six weeks to go to Christmas Eve. We visited the Dome and then had some Austrian food.

Sunday Lena took me to see Castle Schönbrunn a bit outside the city. I enjoyed the guided tour and think I have to read up on the Habsburg kings and queens, especially on Maria-Theresia, Franz Josef and of course Sisi, the Bavarian girl who married the Austrian prince and became queen.

Castle Schönbrunn

Carriage Museum

Lena had booked a table at the famous Figlmüller for lunch. Here they serve the original Wiener Schnitzel that will be to big for your plate. If you do not manage to swallow all this delicious piece of meat, the staff is well prepared and will hand you paper and a bag to carry the remainders home.

With my stomach full I bid Lena farewell and drove back home to high fuel prices and foggy days.

Frankfurt - Mannheim

Saturday morning I left early for my first AIESEC Alumni Germany assembly as a board member. It took place in the Opera Tower - one of Frankfurts many banking towers. We had a good view and interesting discussions.

Opera Tower

View on Frankfurt's skyline

Opera House

After dinner I moved on to Mannheim to visit Sindhu there.

Castle of Mannheim

Sunday she showed me around town. We went to the Technoseum which is like a playground for small and big kids. There were buttons to press, strings to pull and much more. After walking around Luisenpark we took the elevator up to the TV tower from where we enjoyed a good view on the city.

Technoseum

View from Mannheim's TV tower

The late lunch we took in the city center at a Bavarian restaurant. Then we walked back to the main station where I boarded my train home.

Busworld Kortrijk

Another business trip brought me to the little town of Kortrijk near the French border. The place is known in the bus business only because of the Busworld - the biggest bus trade fair.

Mercedes Coach & Neoplan Skyliner

Coach of the Year: VDL Futura

I attended two days of press conferences, walked from stand to stand and gathered a lot of information on our competitors and their products. The newest trends are more and more driving into ecological friendly vehicles. Nearly all major players displayed hybrid buses (diesel-electro/ gas-electro) and there were even some prototypes of fully electrical vehicles which is the next step.

Volvo 7900 Hybrid

Mercedes BlueTec Hybrid

Solaris Urbino Electric

Golden Dragon Hybrid

Some manufacturers even offered test drives of their buses, so I got the chance to make us of my bus driver license and drove a Volvo Intercity bus and the MAN Lion's City Hybrid. The later was very fascinating as I saw immediately that the battery got charged when I braked. Then it switched automatically to electric drive for one km if I stayed below 25 km/h. If the battery got below 50% or I was driving faster the combustion engine kicked in again.

MAN Lion's Coach Hybrid

As Kortrijk is really small, we stayed all in Lille, France. Lille is a lovely and lively old city from what I saw.

Lille

Friday evening I was heading back to Brussels to catch a flight back home.

Leipzig's Waldstraßenviertel

Thursday afternoon I left Munich and headed north to an AIESEC conference where I held a workshop on Friday. In the evening I boarded again a train and going back home to Leipzig.

My friends Steffen and Becki just moved house and now live in my favorite quarter: Waldstraßenviertel. Here I worked during my studies for a real estate agent and got to know many of the lovely art deco houses from inside. I even did write a paper about it.

All the houses are big multi-stored buildings dating back mainly to three eras:

- 1830-1840

- 1870-1900 founders time

- 1900-1918 art deco / art nouveau

So Sunday morning I strolled around the quarter, enjoying the sun and the majestic buildings.

In the last two decades after reunification many of those buildings have been restored to their former beauty, so you can experience again their decorated facades and live in big rooms with stucco on the ceiling and parquet floor.

If I ever return to live in Leipzig, this will be my quarter.

Oktoberfest & Castle Neuschwanstein

For my 5th Oktoberfest I had a clear mission: get my own table in one of the tents.

End of March I started to send faxes to all of them except the ones I visited in the last years. The replies were all the same: We are sold out on the evenings and weekends, but you can get a table for lunch Monday through Wednesday. That's not what I wanted.

For luck there was a last tent taking late applications. So I got a table for 10 on the gallery of Armbrustschützenzelt where we spent a great evening.

In total I made it four times to Oktoberfest this year a new record:

- with my colleague Nicole to Hippodrome

- with friends and colleagues at my own table in Armbrustschützenzelt

- with my department to Bräurosl and

- with Sindhu and Nicole once again to Hippodrome

Sindhu and me did some powershopping to get her the right outfit for the event.

It was great and I will try to get a table in another tent next year.

A week later with Sindhu back from Italy we did a day trip to the Alps, seeing the first snow, strolling around alpine towns and walking up to Castle Neuschwanstein.

Snow covered mountains around Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Castle Neuschwanstein

Sindhu with Bavarian landscape as a backdrop

Walking down Moskva ...

Just 48 hours after landing, I took off again in eastern direction. This time it was a business trip to Moscow.

Kreml

There I visited the Commercial Vehicle Show CONTRANS in the Crocus Expo Centre. I enjoyed the daily travels on the Moscow Metro and the beautiful old stations - see also the blog entry from June 2008.

COMTRANS is the largest commercial vehicle show in Russia and all major Russian, European and Chinese brands were present. KAMAZ and GAZ Group had the biggest stand, on the MAN stand we showcased four buses of MAN and NEOPLAN as well as several trucks.

The trade fair was interesting, even though at most of stands the staff just spoke Russian. Our staff spoke good English and German and as most of them joined only recently I tried to meet all of them.

Red Square in the evening

Besides doing some competitor analysis, I joined a business breakfast where I learnt more about Russian economy and retail. The meeting took place at the Kempinslki Baltschug from which I had a splendid view on the Kreml, Red Square and St Basil's Cathedral.

St Basil's Cathedral

In the evenings, I met Alla and her husband for dinner, strolled around Red Square and GUM and went to a Russian Dance Show.

GUM

riday after lunch I left for the airport. First I took the metro to Pavelezkaya Station and from there the Aeroexpress that brought me to Domodedovo Airport within 45 minutes.