Meet the Kienbaums

Germany is the leading export nation in the world, and they have many international companies. Some of Germany’s biggest companies turn to Kienbaum to help them with international recruitment. Kienbaum was founded in 1945 by Gerhard Kienbaum and has now grown into Germany’s largest recruitment firm. In addition, Kienbaum has a Management Consultancy. All in all, Kienbaum is active in 15 countries and counts over 600 employees. Most of these are however in Gummersbach, where our headquarters are located.

More info at www.kienbaum.com

Going to Gummersbach

Every morning I meet the colleagues from Kienbaum who also live in Köln and ride with them to Gummersbach. (route plan)

It takes about 25 minutes, during which I can either get depressed by seeing the endless traffic jams on the roads heading into Köln, or I can get inspired by the beautiful scenery as the road makes its way up into the hills. I never cease to be amazed by how hilly, and therefore scenic, Germany is. Regarless of view, it goes by pretty quickly since my most frequent "driver" likes speed (I usually tell him to go a bit easier on the gas when we hit 185 km/h).

The downside with this car pool arrangement is of course, that I am to a large extent bound by the schedule of the driver. This has so far meant that I leave Köln at 8 a.m. sharp and usually return around 8 p.m.

Frei Tag

Fridays are (almost) free days. Today I'll be part of a study trip to Europe's largest Steel Plant which claims that it's
approximately 3250 employees produced 5.47 millions tons in 2005 - about 12% of the crude steel manufactured in Germany.
Could be very interesting. We have been instructed to wear clothes completely covering our bodies, so my expectations of something exciting happening are high. If I don't get to see some boiling/flowing iron, I would be most disappointed. ;-)

Compare this with last week's Friday, when I was visiting the Picasso exhibition in Düsseldorf.This self-portrait (made only a year or so before his death, at the remarkable age of 91) caught my eye, but other than I only really like one more painting (and for some mysterious reason it can not be found online and shared)

Much better were the paintings in the permanent exhibition. Who cannot like Dalí or fall for these two Magritte paintingsThis (La Modèle rouge) is actually one of my favourite paintings, and I did not know it was here in Düsseldorf.

This picture (Le Plaisir) prompted all kinds of thoughts: is this human destruction of nature, or perhaps a comment on that even sweet things have a dark side?

Rivalry

I am switching sides. As mentioned before I am now leaving Düsseldorf (partly) to have my new base in Cologne/Köln. The cities aren’t too different but for several reasons there is a strong rivalry between the two (perhaps because they are much alike?)

Köln is much bigger and older. It has more prestigious university and is the predominant Media-city of Germany. So when Düsseldorf became the regional Capital Köln started having a grudge. Trying to order a beer from Düsseldorf when you are in Köln is considered very rude. Strangely this attitude extents a bit further than the bar. Our teacher told us that for many years, if you were driving from the north along the highway there would not be any signs indicating the Düsseldorf exit, so many drivers ended up in Köln. I actually noticed something similar when riding the airport shuttle bus to Düsseldorf. There was only one sign, just before the exit, so if you aren’t paying attention you’ll still miss it.

How the Düsseldorfers wish that their road sign looked like
(Statt means "instead of" but is pronounced similarly to "Stadt",
which means City and is very common on road signs)

The Economist and I

On previous occasions when I have been abroad I have found myself with some extra time on my hands, which I have used to among other things sink deep into my favourite newspaper, The Economist.

Sadly, my subscription is to a mail-box which I have not had access to for the last month so I have started reminiscing about wonderful pieces I read before (clearly a sign that I am addicted to this paper-based “mind expanding substance”).

This might sound strange but I still remember how stunned I was when I saw this graph:

To quote from the article

In an article in Science magazine in May 2002, the two demographers argued that the four-decade increase in life expectancy since 1840 is so linear that it “may be the most remarkable regularity of mass endeavour ever observed”.

I also remember when I read this:

People in very poor countries are, on average, less intelligent than those in rich ones. Some readers may be shocked by this statement, so let's rephrase it.

Some 800m people do not have enough to eat. Without proper nutrition, the human body cannot develop properly. That includes the brain. Those who are ill-fed tend to end up both physically shorter and less mentally agile than they otherwise would have been. Hunger also spurs millions of children to drop out of school in order to scavenge for food, and those who manage to attend school despite empty bellies find it excruciatingly hard to concentrate.

Few papers would be so bold in their choice of words.

(Higher) Frequency

Yesterday I was in Cologne, checking out places to stay. I know that it is a bit late in the game to look for an apartment less than a week before I am about to start work, but since the housing market in Germany is liquid and functioning (as opposed to other places I know) this actually works fine.

Most students and interns share apartments (called Wohngemeinschaft, or simply WG). Renting a room is then a process in which I must convince the owner of the room that I am responsible enough to return it in good condition, but also convincing the other flat-mates that I am fun enough to hang with.

After having checked-out my latest WG, I took a short walk over to the AIESEC-Köln Stammtisch (i.e. the weekly get-together-over-beers). I am always amazed how AIESEC enables young people to quickly find friends in pretty much every corner of the world. The risk of me being lonely or not speaking enough German can now safely be said to be zero.

The main event however was who I ran into at this Stammtisch. In 2004 I did an internship in Nigeria, and a Mexican girl who interned after me (but whom I so far had only seen in pictures) was at this Stammtisch! Wow! A person who has almost the same Nigerian experience as me, and we by chance happen to meet in Cologne. As I've written before, this tendency to run into people is unbelievable.

"Heaven and Earth"

When Julia was visiting, we went out and enjoyed some of the regional cuisine. My dish was called "Himmel und Erde", meaning "Heaven and Earth". It is two big slices of Blood-sausage on an island of mashed potateo in a lake of beer-sauce. It tasted much like the Swedish blood-pudding, which I happen to like. Of course we washed this down with (the local) Alt-bier.

Frequency

I just realized that I have had almost a 3-week break from blogging. Sure, I haven't got internet at home (a bit of a tumultuous home at that one could add), but that is no excuse. Henceforth I'll blog shorter and more often that I promise.

One cool thing is how serendipitous things have been. I knew I had friends in Düsseldorf and Köln that I could hang with, but it is amazing how many people I literally run into on the streets whom I know. On the second day in Düsseldorf I met Nadine, who works for the Swedish Chamber of Commerce and whom I know through AIESEC. Then, when I was exploring Köln one weekend, I ran into a Sandhya, whom I know from my exchange semester in St. Gallen. She is about to start her internship in Köln too, and will stay here about the same length as I. Then yesterday I, also at the Chamber of Commerce, ran into a Malin who started at SSE the same year as me.

Time to Move

Next week I’ll move to Cologne/Köln and begin the internship phase of my stay in Germany. I have a place to stay for a while but will try to quickly find something better alternative. As I move from Düsseldorf it is not a complete good-bye. I’ll be coming back every second weekend for more German language training. One thing that I will look forward to on these trips back is the Mensa. Mensa is usually the student canteen, and this particular Mensa is the one at the Kunstakademie (Art Academy). Not only is it a steady source of wonderful Germany words (e.g. Kartoffelernteergebnisse, meaning potatoharvestyield) it also offers the best value in terms of food I’ve seen in any OECD country*. For about 1,5€ you can fill you stomach. Wonderful.

Moving also means saying goodbye to my “family”. They were nice and helpful but clearly had some internal issues. From what I understood the Dad in the family went to Dresden, on the other side of Germany, and tried to get a job there for a week. In the mean-time the Daughter (who I had the most contact with) moved to her paternal grand-parents in Duisburg, about 30 minutes away from Düsseldorf. And the mother rented out her room. Now the Dad is back in town, BUT does not stay in the apartment. In some sense I am glad to now be moving on. Hope they patch things up soon though.

*Nothing beats India when it comes to value for money at restaurants

Karneval

A week or two ago Karneval took over this part of Germany. Already the week before I started running into people (of all ages) with strange costumes and painted faces. These incidents increased exponentially until, on Rosenmontag, it all came to a magnificent culmination. All the time people were partying; dancing everywhere, eating lots of sausages and of course consuming copious amount of beer.

Like before, I'll share some pictures my friends took of these eventsTypically (i.e., for Karneval) dressed-up Germans
Rosenmontagszug is a parade with certain political elements, but all in a very humorous way

Some costumes were clearly very elaborate

One thing that puzzled us Swedes were why the Germans had chosen to party at a time of the year which normally is pretty cold (however, we experienced optimal weather, with sunshine and 15 degrees plus). Perhaps the reason, as with Lucia in Sweden, is that when nature is at its coldest and darkest, that is when you need to have something fun to do.