Deutschland: part 2

Monday morning I get up in Marek’s place alone, because he has left at the time M&A consultants leave many days in the morning (and obviously not aligned with a 3 day holiday getting up time). However I activate myself around 7am, have breakfast in a nice terrace in the middle of Düsseldorf, go back to see Medien Hafen again with daylight, take some pics (I will post them tomorrow) and walk to the train station to see the famous Cologne Cathedral. It was the tallest building in the world when completed in the 19th century (Then the Americans started their fixation for high buildings with the Washington Monument and of course…)

After visiting the cathedral I have around three hours in Cologne that I spend walking and eating a cereal bar and a big ice cream in the main square of the city. Time to go to Frankfurt to see another IESE intern (Huy) in the fastest train in Germany. I felt asleep after 10 sec in the train and could not appreciate the speed. Huy text me that he was late but that someone would be waiting me in Frankfurt station. Yuha!!! (A Finnish celebrity at IESE and the author of some of the best comments this year in class, all of them of exceptional quality of course). Around 8pm the three of us go to typical German restaurant. Here we enter a bit into detail, because the first thing I ask in the restaurant is to have a beer, and the answer: “Nein”…plus something I don´t understand. Huy translates and tells me that we are in a typical German restaurant but there is no beer, only “apple wine” (a kind of German sidra). A german restaurant without beer???!!! I try the apple wine and Huy orders a big pork leg for the Spanish tourist. Barbarian delicious food (German “Codillo” vamos). Then we start talking with a funny waiter that fits perfectly the German stereotype of a fat beer drinker. Well, they start talking, I only laugh and ask Huy to translate everything he says. During that time Yuha has already started to talk with two German girls, MD students, that come with us after dinner for a drink in the beach. “The beach” is an artificial beach in the top of a parking lot with a beautiful sight of frankfurt’s skyscrapers. To be precise there is no artificial beach, only sand, natural transported sand.

You can see the funny waiter here if you want: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Hqm8x4RiQ. Pay atention to the end of the video when the man starts speaking spanish!!

Yuha and our his German personal doctors.

After that we go to Yuha’s cool place for the last drink. In fact the view from his terrace is better than the one in the posh artificial beach. There, to remember part of our first year in the MBA we start talking about capital markets, and Huy starts to falling asleep when Yuha is explaining me some details of trading and covering positions. Time to go to bed; the two interns in Frankfurt have to get up early to work.
Tuesday morning I get up with Huy (in Huy´s place I mean) and he drops me close to the river by car. Fast walk to take some pics of Frankfurt, another nice breakfast in another nice square, and another train station this time to Heidelberg.

Once in Heidelberg I meet my cousin Alberto (He is finishing his “orgasmus” exchange in Germany), and more or less at the same time, the rain appears again.

We walk through the center of the city and then to Heidelberg’s castle. Nice view of the city.


This is a barrel of beer. A big barrel of beer. A huge barrel of beer!!!

After the castle I start to think about losing the train, and we decide to go closer to the station to have my last beer in German for this long weekend. Very good weekend. Wise decision I took on Saturday. See ya!!

Music:
The Feeling – Twelve stops and home (because of my hours in Düsseldorf).
Tocotronic vs Console - Freiburg 3.0 (because of my hours in Frankfurt)
Leona Naess – Home (because of the train back…home)