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