Frankfurt

Outside an organic farm where we had dinner. We had a wonderful time with our guide and owner of the farm, Bobo.
That would be me looking like a fool in some ancient Roman ruins. Not sure what is up with the pose, gotta wonder about me sometimes.
Memorial to the young Iranian woman who tragically lost her life standing up for what she believed in. We are lucky to live in such a wonderfully free country.
My good friend that I became very close to, Tom. We are standing up top of St. Nicholas church, what a view.
Pastor Meyer allowing us into his church and being very candid and honest with us about the German church system.
Famous plaza in Frankfurt, unfortunately it was damaged during the war and recreated.

Well I am obviously going backwards on my travels but it has been a crazy few days to say the least, more to come on that.
Frankfurt? Huh what do I say about that. Gotta be honest, not one of my favorite cities. To me it was rather blah compared to Berlin and Hamburg. However there was the charming city square and city government. Other than that I could have done without and stayed in Heidelberg. However Deutsche Bank is headquartered there so you gotta go where the people that pay the bills tell you to go. Alright on to it.
Before we left for Frankfurt we had one more meeting. This meeting was one of my most enjoyable. It was with Der Spiegel, Germanys largest newsmagazine. It was started in 1947 and has continued to grow. I have always had the desire to be a writer and I came away from the meeting with even more of a desire to write. I think when I get home I will try to pursue a job writing for our small town journal. We spoke with a writer and editor. I found it to be fascinating how much work goes into the stories and development of the stories. I asked a few questions and feel like I came away understanding the inner workings of a magazine. We then had some free time which is always nice. Nick and I walked around town for a bit and soaked in our last afternoon in Hamburg. I really enjoyed our stay in Hamburg our guests did a great job showing us around and making us feel comfortable in the big city. However one can say that the local laundry business enjoyed my company even more. Dropping 67 euros on laundry was not a pleasant experience, cheaper than the hotel though. Another source of laughter for the group!

Our first day in Frankfurt was rather interesting. We got all dressed up to go to Deutsche Bank, styling and profiling. Well we get there and they tell us that our meeting was scheduled for the next day. There was a mistake made by our tour guide in Frankfurt. No big deal we just switched days. So we went back to the hotel, changed and went on a walking tour. Always nice walking around and learning then sitting in a room with no lights and no air. We went to an ancient church, St. Nicholas, and met the pastor. His name is Pastor Meyer and he is originally from the US. He was very welcoming and quite a nice man. When we entered the church we were serenaded with organ music played by one of our guides. Quite the scene. The church is one of the few buildings not demolished during the bombing of Frankfurt. Some interesting things we learned about the churches in Germany. People pay a church tax which is about 80 to 100 euros a month. However this tax supports the church, kindergartens and social programs for the poor and homeless. Also you have pastors and clergy teach in the public schools. I thought this was interesting since we of course have nothing like this. We then went to St. Pauls Church which was the site of the first German Parliament in 1848 and also was site of a famous JFK speech. A lot of important historical events have occured in this church/meeting place. We continued to walk around and ended up at the Goethe House. Goethe is a famous German poet and writer. Our trip is sponsored by the Goethe institute. The house like almost all of the city was destroyed during the war so it has been recreated.

Our last meeting was with Deutsche Bank. The bank is one of the worlds leading financial institutions doing business in over 130 countries. Suprisingly enough they have not been impacted by the financial crisis, in fact according to them they have benefited due to lack of competition. We also were told about Deutsche Banks commitment to corporate social responsibility. They believe that their employees should volunteer and that their company should invest in the arts, education and the environment. The discussion was interesting but long and lengthy. For the social responsibility I counted 37 slides with too much info on the slides. However they are the ones paying for the trip so whatever they wanted to do was and is fine by me.