IF Blog is one of the few Munich blogs written mostly both in German and English.  We and I have to thank Evelyn (EG) for this, because she is the one who translates all of my and many of the team’s articles into English at high speed. She does it because she delights in our friendship and because she rather likes the English language.

All I can do is say thank you very much, Evelyn!

But Evelyn – among other hobbies – has a second and very special field of interest. One she practices with enthusiasm and a high degree of professionalism. Along with her son, she sings in various choirs. And now the two of them became members of a very special choir, the

arcis vocalisten

under Thomas Gropper.

Since the picture has been taken before they joined, you cannot yet find our Evelyn and her son Martin on it.

At the end of June, the arcis vocalisten will be heard singing a new and very special project. After George Frederik Händel’s most famous oratorio has often been sung in the shortened or German versions and/or accompanied with modern instruments, the  arcis vocalisten are now giving a concert singing the  complete, unabridged, English original version accompanied with historic instruments played by L’arpa festante!

On Saturday, June, 29^th, the first concert will be at the Christuspavillion of Kloster Volkenroda in Thüringen, where the Jesus-Bruderschaft Volkenroda organized the event.

One day later, on Sunday, June, 30^th, at 19.00 hours, it is the “home game” for the choir. That is when we can enjoy the music at the Himmelfahrtskirche in München-Sendling (Kidlerstr.).

The soloists are Hanna Herfurtner – Soprano, Franz Schlecht – Basso, Robert Sellier – Tenor and Andreas Pehl – Altus. The conductor is Thomas Gropper, who will also provide you with a 30-minute introduction to the work at 18.00 hours in the church.

In his MESSIAH, Händel creates a three-part sheet of pictures on the figure of the Redeemer, the annunciation of his birth, the Christmas Story, the Passion and the Resurrection. The delicate and passionate choirs are the backbone of the concert.

So now you know what you have to do: look in your calendar if you have time to go and then order tickets!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

About entrepreneurship exemplified by Jean Paul!

Every year, the InterFace AG investigates a special person who celebrates an exceptional jubilee and whom we find exciting. This year, the face-of-the-year at InterFace AG is Jean Paul. He would have been 250 on March, 21st. Consequently, the three presentations of the 2013 IF Forum are associated with Jean Paul.

Our first speaker is Bernhard Echte.

Unser erster Referent ist Bernhard Echte. Herr Echte is a linguist, organizer of exhibitions and publicist. For many years, the Zurich Robert Walser-Archive was directed by him. Today, he is an entrepreneur, managing the publishing company “Nimbus, Kunst und Bücher”.

His presentation will be on Thursday, April, 11th, 2013 at the Unterhaching InterFace AG building. As usual, the event will start at 6 p.m. – we asked the speaker to start at 6.30 p.m. After the presentation, you can exchange ideas and sit together enjoying the evening.

There are still a few vacancies. If you would like to register for the IF Forum with Herrn Bernhard Echte, send us an e-mail!

Herr Echte is not just entrepreneur with all his heart. He is also someone who can tell an exciting story. He knows how to make his audience fascinated by alien worlds. Naturally, his favourite topics are enterprises and entrepreneurship.

In his scientific role, he knows Jean Paul and his work particularly well. Consequently, he is the ideal person to draw parallels between the small-scale entrepreneur Jean Paul and today’s entrepreneurs. And that is exactly what he will do next Thursday. Come and let yourself be carried away to the world of entrepreneurship as it looked more than 200 years ago.

I look forward to seeing you!

RMD
(Translated by EG)

A Visit to Modern Times

JJean Paul presentations at the IF Forum

In 2013, the IF Forum will deal with the modern parallels to Jean Paul’s topics and ideas.
With presentations about entrepreneurship, hypertext, wit and new media, we wish to show new perspectives and questions with respect to the here and now.
Come and watch!

Jean Paul the Entrepreneur

Jean Paul was among the first German authors who actually could make a living from their art. Mind you, this was regardless of him having started under hard circumstances. He went to the intellectual centres of his time: Leipzig, Weimar, Berlin – and his books were a success to make Goethe envious. When Jean Paul married, even the Prussian Queen invited him to have tea with her and gave him a silver dinner set.

Jean Paul’s ascent and success was not due to accident. Instead, it was because of prudence and entrepreneurial instinct. Even when times were hard and the Napoleonic Wars devastated huge parts of Europe, he was still able to maintain his position. The way Jean Paul combined sustainability with success is still remarkably modern today.

Our speaker Bernhard Echte, linguist, organizer of exhibitions and publicist, used to be the managing director of the Zurich Robert Walser-Archive for many years. Today, he is the director of the publishing company “Nimbus, Kunst und Bücher”.

Time: April, 11th, 2013 (Thursday) | Starting at 18.00 hours | Location InterFace AG, Unterhaching

Jean Paul and Hypertext

Even before he took the name Jean Paul, the young Johann Richter read everything he could lay hands on. Hardly any of the books he read belonged to him. He wrote down summaries of everything he read in his notebooks. In the same notebooks, you would also find comments on ideas currently cursing through his brains. Jean Paul added catch phrases to all his ideas, now called Tags. In doing so, he created a huge private encyclopedia. It was structured like a modern database. Said encyclopedia was to be the basis for his literary works. Without this database, Jean Paul would never have been able to put into practice his unique style – a style which is volatile and exact at the same time. He managed to make a virtue out of the financial misery of his youth the result of which still surprises us today.

Our speaker Annina Klappert is an assistant teacher at the seminar of general and comparative literature at Erfurt University. Her dissertational thesis was a structural comparison between the texts and hypertexts of Jean Paul. She specializes in media, referencing and virtual reality.

Time: July, 11th, 2013 (Thursday) | Starting at 18.00 hours | Location InterFace AG, Unterhaching

Jean Paul, Wit, Postmodernism and the New Media

He was a “Non-Believer in God”, a “witty decomposer” and an ardent cosmopolitan, sceptic and joke-teller. His pedagogical doctrine Levana is highly praised. It advised to use wit and irony as the basis for a healthy personality, rather than the grim sternness known from Fichte’s oratory to the German nation. In his policy of the “third position between the Germanics and the Bonapartists” you can anticipate the post-modern irresoluteness between opposing poles of “truth”. With his esthetical deviation, he already practices the typical interruptions and jumps common in the hypertexts of the internet. Who was this man who hardly ever left his home and yet was mentally so far travelled that he surpassed many of his contemporaries?

Our guest Roberto Simanowski is professor for media sciences at Basel University. He investigates the changes in writing caused by the digital age and publishes the online magazine dichtung-digital – a journal for digital aesthetics.

Time: November, 7th, 2013 (Thursday) | Starting 18.00 hours | Location InterFace AG, Unterhaching

Carl and Gerlinde (XXVIII)

It was like a meteor strike!

At least with respect to how often it happened. In terms of the actual damage done, it was actually initially negligible!

But if you looked at how frequently it happened, it was really as scarce as a meteor strike – which, basically, is no surprise when you are talking a mushroom dish. After all, mushrooms are rather few and far between – and the yellow boletus even more so!

If, however, you included the slime mould ’Physarum polycevalum’ into your considerations, then fungi suddenly were no longer all that scarce; not to mention all those disgusting fungi that seemed to feel comfortable on the most intimate parts of the human body with their mycelia. Nobody could claim they were not itchy!

Still, the fact remains that the slimy protozoon ’Physarum polycevalum’ is a lot more aggravating than all other fungi, because it can practically make its slimy way on the shortest route to all the places in this world without any involvement of brains. In particular, it can go wherever you will find oats. And you really can find oats everywhere, can’t you? Not just in larders, kitchens, drawers and on tiled floors.

But, of course, you could never find them on Gerlinde’s kitchen floor!

Let alone in one of her drawers, because, naturally, this brainless ’slimy’ would never have even the ’slightest chance in the oats‘ world’ where Gerlinde’s cleanliness and orderliness reigned -  a fact that went without saying, both in her own and Carl’s opinion.

But – at least so Carl thought – why should that mean that no other fungus must ever appear more often than a meteor in their shared kitchen? Take, for instance, the much-loved-by-Carl yellow boletus Boletus edulis of the giant puffball group. He certainly would not have minded if this species had found its frying and comfortably frizzling way into the sparklingly clean kitchen a little more often over the year. That would definitely have been welcome!

On the contrary!

Well, basically, as a logical conclusion and if you do the probability calculations, it had to happen at some time, didn’t it? So it happened that one Wednesday, when Gerlinde, as she put it, just could no longer resist the almost obscenely displayed yellow boletus at Emmi’s fruit and vegetable stand on the weekly market at H., she actually bought some.

Buying them had practically become a duty since Emmi had already registered how longingly Gerlinde had looked towards the yellow boletus while being served the desired fruit choice of mango, melons, papaya and kiwi. Almost at an aside, Emmi had informed her that Carl, as he had confessed not long ago, liked the yellow boletus ever so much. So Gerlinde really had no choice but to ask the caring Emmi to weigh in a good portion of those obscene yellow boletus for her Carl who was obviously loved by all women. Well, she had better take six hundred gram, Emmi said with a roguish laugh!

Gerlinde even managed to get the wide tagliatelle from the neighboring stall and still be there as promised for a cup of the delicious cappuccino with Hannelore and Kurt at their favorite Italian restaurant before heading home to prepare the mushroom festival for Carl…

Later in the afternoon, when Carl came home from the office surprisingly early and as he just unlocked the door, his very sensitive nose – which, strangely enough, always found its way to the kitchen like a magnet needle found the North Pole – noticed that actually something as fundamental as a meteor strike must have happened: his Gerlinde, who was not known for being particularly enthusiastic about cooking, was busy preparing his favorite dish!

Tonight, he was indeed going to eat – mind you, this was no fata morgana – ’Roasted yellow boletus in cream and wine!

It really seemed almost like Gerlinde had foreseen that this was a day when he would be especially in need of some balm to make him feel better. After all, this had been another one of those days you really want to forget in a hurry. Otherwise he would probably not only have murdered this new anathema Fritz Kogler in cold blood right the next day, but ’Golden Bernie’ , who had seen to it that this ’slimy fungus Kogler’ got into the section ’outerwear’ with sales as his responsibility, along with him.

Mind you, there was nothing basically wrong with Fritz Kogler. Except that, for a man, he was just too handsome, and he knew it, too. And the young female employees were falling for his slimy charm just in the same manner as did scattered oats when confronted with the ’Physarum polycevalum’!

Incidentally, this whole affair had already been going on for three weeks. After all, it had been the wish of Dr. Bernhard Osterkorn that this slimy Fritz should definitely learn about the entire TRIGA company; and the section ’hosiery and knitted articles’ for which Carl was responsible as a salesperson, was definitely part of the whole company.

And it was truly sad that this stupid, very pregnant cow, Miriam Braun, who, after all, had already been ensnared by our ’dear Bernie’ did not notice how this Fritz Kogler kept listening in on her and spinning intrigues all around her!

For Carl, it had been quite obvious after no more than two days that this slimy Fritz was massively pushing towards the ’underwear’ of Miriam Braun. He literally thirsted for her post as soon as she would be on her maternity leave. But the allegedly so clever and worldly Miriam Braun never seemed to notice it. Instead, regardless of her pregnancy, or maybe because of it, she was totally fascinated by the disgusting Fritz.

And that was exactly what promoted ’Bernie‘s’ always brilliantly seedy game: because since Miriam Braun had disappointed him, it was clear that this beast had to be demolished piecewise until she would herself realize that she had been a huge mistake for TRIGA and was no longer needed. So sunshine boy Kogler was exactly what Dr. Osterkorn needed at this time.

But now – back in his home sweet home – Carl’s world was at least in balance for one small moment. His beloved Gerlinde had prepared his favorite meal for him!
It all smelled absolutely heavenly …

Gerlinde, too, exuded some aroma when she came towards him with her happily reddened face; the light and sweet Riesling she had used for the sauce had apparently already had some effect on her…

She was truly excited when, after her deliciously wet welcoming kiss, she told Carl in randomly capricious fashion how it all had happened with these strange mushrooms today. How they had attracted her attention in a truly obscene manner and she had therefore had no choice but to buy them; how she was now truly looking forward to all this mushroomy paradise which, basically, she had not dared to prepare in ages. As this went on, Carl saw himself being more and more compelled to suffer the ever-present multitude of odors wafting through the air. Snuffling with relish, he pushed Gerlinde ever further back into her own, holy kitchen area, directing his own insatiable nose not only towards the frying pan where the first installment of golden-brown delicacies was already comfortably frizzling, but also towards her fleshy, naked arms and her neck until finally reaching her slightly lighter, flimsily soft hairline in acrobatic sniffing manner, while a fidgety Gerlinde, getting less and less focused, tried to turn the brown mushroom slides with her kitchen utensils….

Making use of her last reserves of housewifely instinct, Gerlinde also tried to direct Carl, who wound himself around her in python style, towards the already waiting mortar with the fresh caraway – before, with a shrill outcry and several more noise, this makeshift defense, too, broke down and the more and more stony mushroom glory got mercilessly charred in the frying pan…

The accompanying wads of smoke shortly afterwards not only caused the smoke-detector to activate the siren; they also remained lingering through the entire building for several days, reminding them in a ghostly manner of the events of the day.

KH
(Translated by EG)

Immigration

Since I myself am now also an immigrant, I made myself knowledgeable on the subject.

For information about Australia as an immigration country, you might wish to start with the Victorian Immigration Museum. Up until the 1960ies, the government encouraged Australian citizens to talk to friends or relatives in Europe about immigrating to Australia.

Without the immigration waves between the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries, the conquest of this huge country would not have been possible. (It is a separate story how the rich Aborigine culture was almost totally destroyed in the process).

By now, much has changed. To be sure, in absolute numbers, Australians with origins in Europe and the USA are still the majority. But immigration from India and, above all, China, increases considerably.

A few days ago, there was a long article in the local newspaper „The Age“, announcing that apartments in a new building in the district of Glen Waverly were open for inspection on the weekend (that is standard procedure if someone wants to sell or rent out property: a certain day for inspection of the objects is set, and then they are sold according to the principle „first come first serve“). For the agent, it came as a total surprise that the interested parties were almost exclusively Chinese. Some of them were actually prepared to pay up to 40,000 $ above the asked price for a certain apartment. The fact that 16 apartments were sold for a total of 40 million dollars on that day shows how solvent the interested parties were.

By now, the ratio of Australians with Chinese origins (who have a permanent permit to stay) in those 15 districts of Melbourne where Chinese like to live is between 27% and 16%. According to a survey, these districts are chosen because they have good schools, good public transport and an active Chinese community. For the Melbournians of Caucasian descent, this situation is a challenge, because they witness how – right under their noses and quite obviously for everybody – Melbourne is changing. Unfortunately, it also causes numerous racist escapades.

The name of the first Chinese school in Melbourne is quite remarkable: „Xin Jin Shan Chinese Language and Culture School“. Xin Jin Shan roughly translates into ”New Golden Mountain“. Incidentally, that is the name the Chinese gave the Australian gold mines in 1850 to distinguish them from the Californian gold mines that were running dry at the time. Those were called Jiu Jin Shan (”Old Golden Mountain“).

Mind you, today the majority of modern Chinese who immigrate to Australia are no longer looking for their one chance in life; they are already a success and wish to secure and maintain their prosperity.

Downtown Melbourne

Here is a totally different issue: to be sure, we live quite nicely in the outskirts of Melbourne at Williamstown, but downtown Melbourne (also known as CBD “Central Business District”) has an inimitable flair. In fact, it can even hold a torch to Paris.

Traffic is more or less what you would expect to find in a city with 4.5 million car enthusiastic citizens. Even a reasonable public transportation system, along with the fact that one hour parking at the garage is 16 $ and a parking ticket costs a minimum of 180 $ do not seem to make any difference. In between the densely packed cars, you will frequently find bike couriers maneuvering their way through the traffic. They must either have finished all they ever wanted from life and are thus ready to die, or else are practicing for the next Tour-de-France.

Information for all car drivers: in the city centre, you will find so-called Safety Zones where you will have to use the left (!) lane if you want to turn right – it is the notorious Melbourne ”hook-turn“. It is supposed to make it possible for those on the right lane to go ahead unimpeded; however, it will only work if the first driver who wishes to make a turn starts in Formel-1 fashion; if he fails to do that, there will be an ear-splitting signal-horn concert, because, naturally, nobody behind him wants to remain sitting in the middle of the crossing.

Many houses in the city centre were built in the middle of the 19th century, when Melbourne was the world’s richest city. Of course, this was due to the gold rush – at the time, around 1/3 of all the world’s gold was mined in Australia, with the most yielding gold fields in Victoria, not far from Melbourne. To this day, this prosperity is obvious if you look at all those noble bourgeois and business houses.

The special flair of the city centre is also due to the arcades and lanes, the creative (sometimes also endearingly scurrilous) shops and the thousands of bars, coffee shops and restaurants. The most beautiful and elaborately decorated one of them is the Royal Arcade.

The Royal Arcade is guarded by the biblical giants Gog and Magog.

Apparently, some of the arcades in a side lane simply came into being because the owners of the restaurants and bars joined forces and had some protection against rain spun over the street; all you need after that is a few chairs and (in winter) an electric heater and the place will quickly be so crowded at lunch and in the early evening hours that you can no longer pass.

The place is particularly full on Fridays after 4.30 p.m. – because that is when almost all employees working in the CBD offices go to the pub for a pre-weekend drink. Now, in spring, you can hear street musicians playing at almost all corners. To me, it seems that the quality of the music is considerably better than, for instance, in Munich. In Australia, Blues and Country are particularly popular.

Chocolatiers and candies shops are currently very much loved in Melbourne. In fact, the Melbournian love of sweets sometimes borders on the bizarre. For instance, there is an Italian restaurant in Carlton where you can get “Chocolate Pizza“.

In the CBD, there are excellent restaurants serving Mediterranean cuisine (Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Moroccan,…). Melbournians are enthusiastic about European cuisine – if you want to eat out for dinner, you have to make a reservation no matter where you are going.

For the critical immigrant from Munich, it remains to be noted that the price-performance ratio cannot always come up to Munch standards. To make up for it, many restaurants and bars have the sitting-room atmosphere of first-class English pubs.

I will be back with my next report – No Worries

JRO
(Translated by EG)

As early as in the middle of last week, it already sat in my letter box. In fact, it accompanied me to Nuremberg last Thursday, remained by my side all the time – and yet only really arrived today.

It is blue, a beautiful blue. Somehow or other, it is already quite an achievement to select a nice colour each month. A colour that is actually suitable for the theme and content. I am quite serious!

The magazine is titled

Doing Nothing.

I rather like this. After all, I dream of the “Lazy Manager“ and “Relaxed Entrepreneur”. Well, I certainly know that many problems will solve themselves. For instance the very important email I never got around to answering late last night. On the next morning, after I woke up, it turned out said email was no longer necessary.

Mind you, you must not confuse doing nothing with “sitting something out“.

Politicians like to do this – and I would prefer them “doing nothing” instead of “sitting things out”. There certainly is a significant difference.

Then you find the sub-title:
And how it can be put to good use.

I do not (yet) understand. Who said I wanted to put doing nothing to good use? So now I open the magazine and start reading the editorial by Frau Fischer. Her heading is “heaven and hell”. And I immediately understand what she means. For some people “doing nothing” is heaven, for others it is “hell”.

Mind you, I am sure you should not see it in terms of black-and-white. Personally, I would think my preference is “doing nothing is heaven”. And I believe “doing nothing is hell” tends a little towards “psychic disorder”. There they go again, my prejudices…

Regardless of the invitation to do nothing, I already read some of the articles. It strikes me that this brand eins edition is mostly about humans and their fate. I find that nice. If you see it under this light, the April brand eins is quite suitable for reading and relaxing during your vacation.

À propos: at the end of Frau Fischer’s editorial, you can also read the words “vacation” and “stress” in a single sentence. Well, if that is how things work, I think I might do without vacation and instead prefer “doing nothing”.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

Two months ago, I ended up in Australia (or, to be precise: Melbourne). After a scientific career in heavy ion physics at the Garching Maier-Leibnitz Laboratory and 30 years of work in various IT functions, I started the time-off phase of my old-age part-time in March 2012. Late in 2011, my wife had received an interesting job offer for Melbourne. After an intense discussion – where the fact that our daughter lives in New Zealand played a considerable role – we decided (so far on a tentative basis) to emigrate to Australia.

Here is some information up front: by now, we managed to do the most important tasks (rent a house, gas, electricity, water, cable TV, telephone, internet…). In a few days, the container will arrive with all our stuff. Then we can start furnishing our house.

Let me start describing some of my(totally subjective) impressions of Australia.

The Weather

Of course, the first thing you notice on a trip to the Southern Hemisphere is the weather: the astronomical winter on the southern hemisphere lasts from June, 21st to September, 23rd. Since Australia is situated between 10 and 44 degrees latitude south-east, this does not say a lot about the entire continent, does it? As far as Melbourne is concerned, we can say: in the daytime, the temperatures are between 17 and 11 degrees Celsius (dependent on how long the sun shines). At night, you might well get 6 degrees Celsius. There is comparatively little rain, but when it rains, it really rains.

Sunrise is currently around 7:30, sun-down at 17:20. Fewer than half of the trees have shed their leaves, some plants already start blossoming – so it does not really look like winter at all.

There is a famous proverb: ‘If you don’t like Melbourne’s weather, wait five minutes and it will change’!

That is totally correct. Here is what it means: as far as clothes are concerned, you have to be prepared for everything at all times. In extreme cases, you can experience all the four seasons on a single day.

In short: winter is roughly what you would see in Germany late in April or early in May, but dryer.

Due to the short period of cold weather, central heating is almost unknown. In our house, the only heating is air conditioning in the living room. It can be switched to heat pump. Since our house, like almost all houses, is made of Rigips, wood and corrugated iron, it gets rather cold in the morning.

Apparently, the Melbournians try to ignore the winter. For me, this seems the only explanation why girls going to school wear mini-skirts and boys shorts. Cool young people like to wear t-shirts – even in inclement weather.

I wonder if such a thing as season-jetlag exists. Some way or other, I miss the summer I was cheated out of (let us wait and see how I will feel about it five months from now)….

Here is a picture of Downtown Melbourne seen from Williamstown Marina

Pelicans near our house

The city of Melbourne

In many sectors of the city, Melbourne seems very European (no surprise, after all, there were many immigrants from Europe – according to a well-known joke, Melbourne is the second biggest Greek city after Athens).    
That is also the reason why they have suburbs like Altona, Brunswick, Coburg and Heidelberg.

Melbourne can boast a huge number of excellent museums and art galleries (for example the National Gallery of Victoria).

It is truly enjoyable to walk through the city centre and look at the thousands of shops – especially in the beautiful historical pedestrians’ arcades. Now is a time when you can buy high-quality clothes at reasonable prices. As a general rule, however, you will always want to be careful with prices (I will tell you more about it in another article).

Comparison with Sydney: Melbourne cannot quite compete with Sydney’s spectacular location. The Sydney skyline with the opera house and the Harbour Bridge is unique in the world. And the beach not far from our house, too, is not quite as wonderful as Bondi Beach. Regardless, Melbourne has some charm of its own, in particular through its lively downtown, which seems European.

Willamstown Beach

We live in Williamstown, a suburb around 13 kilometres from the city centre. Here is where the first harbour for sea ships used to be at the Port Phillip Bay. The place is older than Melbourne. We do not yet have a car of our own. That is why this place is ideal for us: if you take the metro, you will reach the city centre (Central Business District – CBD) in 25 minutes. We have a good infra-structure and all necessary shops (and the beach) are within walking distance. Near the beach, you will find the Jawbone Marine Sanctuary.  With a multitude of oceanic birds – mostly pelican, cormorant, booby and ibis.

Eating out and food

Melbourne (and most of the rest of Australia, as well) is very prosperous – and you will notice it instantly from what things cost: if you want a good dinner for two at CBD, you will have to pay 500 $[1]. Two weeks ago, I went there for a hamburger and a glass of beer and paid 31 $ (incidentally, the beer tastes rather well – they have a number of small, creative breweries).

We often eat Vietnamese or Chinese – where you mostly get excellent quality for reasonable prices.

Locally produced vegetables, meat and fish are often considerably less expensive than in Munich. For me, it came as a surprise to find that there is a huge variety of locally produced, high-quality meat specialties, for instance Salami (you can even get high-quality Bavarian collared pork).

Wine:

In Australia, they grow excellent wine, but, as everywhere, quality has its price. The first time we went into a Vinothek, I asked the salesperson to offer me a bottled wine under 30$; well, that is what he brought – but he looked at me like I had ordered canned wine.

If you go and drink directly at the vintners’, you will also find excellent wines. But even there, you will hardly get a bottle for less than 25$.

The People

Mostly, the people are friendly and helpful. Unfortunately, this is not always true for young persons: the first experiences my wife made with young Australian co-workers were not exclusively positive. Many young employees are egoistical, pampered and basically have not enjoyed a good upbringing. Moreover, the training of Australian IT professionals mostly cannot hold a torch to that in other countries (for instance India). Demanding technological problems are almost always tackled by Indians or Asians.

The people are disarmingly honest if something does not work as it should (and there are quite a few things that don’t). Here is an example: on weekends, metro-trains often change their routes. At those times, friendly metro-link employees will walk all the way through the trains and apologize to the passengers, asking them to listen to the announcements.  Unfortunately, they cannot do anything about it, but the train is doing a different route this time ”no worries mate“…

As far as language goes, I still have a few problems trying to understand some of the people around this place. To be sure, I knew from earlier vacations in Australia and New Zealand that the people here speak English in a way that sounds like they have a hot potato between their teeth. The problems start when I communicate with immigrants from Asia (practically everything physically demanding is done by Asian immigrants). Those are the times when I can only guess what the speaker means (incidentally, this is not true for young Chinese. Their English is excellent).

So this was the first of my highlights – more to follow.

No Worries

JRO

(Translated by EG)

Our next speaker at the IF-Forum, which is to take place on June, 21st, 2012, is Frau Susanne Hofmann of the Tölzer Kasladen. Now she pointed me towards a real highlight.

From June, 15th through June 17th, 2012 (that is Friday through Sunday), the Fourth Cheese Festival will be held at Bad Tölz!

During that time, the Herderpark will again be converted into the world’s cheese centre. Over the years, the Bad Tölz Cheese Festival has become a synonym for cheese culture and indulgence.

On the variety-rich cheese exhibition, along with the big cheese market with more than 70 regional producers from all over the world, you will also get the opportunity to discover all kinds of cheeses.

The variations of best cheese will be accompanied by a cabaret program for the entire family arranged by the famous musician Michael Well. Along with top cheese, Well will again bring many people to the festival, where he will provide the special Bavarian cultural flair.

For more information on the Cheese Festival, click here: www.kaesefestival.de.

Our speaker is the organisation committee of the 4th Cheese Festival. She would be happy to welcome many guests from her InterFace AG connection.

Yes – and I decided to ride my bike to Bad Tölz next Sunday in order to witness the Cheese Festival. I am sure it will be a wonderful day-trip!

RMD
(Translated by EG)