We were invited to Hannover by Konzept & Marketing (K&M), one of the insurance companies Gerhard deals with. We flew out of Stuttgart with HLX (www.tuifly.com - highly recommended), arriving 40 min. later in Hannover, picked up our rental car & went to breakfast at K&M.
After breakfast, we were taken on a tour of the company, to meet the people & see how they process the work that Gerhard sends them. It was surprisingly an interesting tour. One department is actually paperless. Through their own designed network, the daily work is distributed throughout the team members via file folders. With this network system, everyone can see where they others are & how their job flow is progressing. Helps greatly when clients call, over 90% of the time, they are able to be transferred to a person actually at their desk who is familiar with the requested topic. The system even calculates the calls that don't make it to a person so the team can fix what ever needs to be fixed. Even faxes arrive via this network instead of being printed out at a fax machine. Most of the team uses two monitors per PC to use the network most effectively. We were greatly impressed with their administration process.
After the tour, they took us to lunch and then, we could go check into the Hotel Viva Creativo - also highly recommended! It is a creative hotel - hence the name - with each room being designed differently. Some rooms are themed by color and others by local companies, like VW. Our room was the color BLUE & had a special light that spelled out blue on the floor in front of the door. Naturally, blue was the focal color, mixed with white, grey & black. The walls were painted with a marble technique - in blue. Not at all like a typical hotel room - it was very comfortable! The company paid for the mini bar and in the lobby was a fancy coffee machine with espresso, cappuccino & lattes free 24 hours a day! We for sure put that machine to work!
After resting a while, we drove over to the Bahlsen outlet (a cookie company in Hannover) & stocked up on cookies & other treats.
The party started at 7pm in a club K&M rented for the event. James Bond posters & memorabilia from a local collector as well as other "secret agent" things decorated the club. Everyone was given name badges with a secret agent number. Throughout the evening, presentations of clips from Bond films were shown, narrated by the German voice of Mr. Q. Between these presentations, everyone had to log into one of the designated terminals to answer a question to determine the outcome of the mission for the evening. Meanwhile, the buffet was open - certainly not going hungry this weekend! At 12:45am, the results from the questions were tallied up & the winners of the most correct answered received cool prizes. 1st place took home the DVD collection of all Bond films ever made - now that was a huge box! Next, Gerhard was called up front as was given the Insurance Broker (Versicherungsmakler) of the Year Award! He was the only broker in all of Germany invited to the party! Notice the yellow & green boxes in the photo below? His prize was the new Nintendo Wii along with extra remotes! Very exciting!! For those of you who have no clue about Wii, it's the latest technology in video games, requiring the body to make the moves instead of just the thumbs. His set came with golf, bowling, tennis, boxing & baseball.
On Saturday, we drove out to Steinhuder Meer, the largest lake in the State of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). There were many cute stores & cafes along the boardwalk. Below is a duck clapping for Gerhard!
Afterwards, we drove to downtown Hannover for lunch at Henry's, an American styled restaurant, decorated very cool with cheery wood, old American signs as well as American newspaper type wallpaper above the chair rail. As hoped for, the food was delicious. I had a huge, mouth watering BBQ beef burger with fried onions and steak fries! Gerhard's cheeseburger was just as huge with a pile of steak fries and....drum roll please.... DR.PEPPER!!!! two to be exact! What a treat!
So, to help lunch settle, we walked around downtown, window shopping. Actually found a two level craft store, but the prices were too high, still, fun to look. Naturally, Gerhard - consumed with thoughts of Wii, was in search of a store that carried the games to get an idea of the prices.
Something that really stuck out in Hannover were the brick buildings. Up North brick is very common, but down South, stone covered in cream or peach stucco is the norm. Hannover is filled with beautiful buildings & homes. Here is a photo of some buildings downtown - with shops on the street level & apartments up top.
For dinner Saturday, we found a Brother's Bagel shop & ordered yummy turkey bagel sandwiches. Turns out, they ship the bagels anywhere in Germany!! Can't wait to place my first order!
Sunday, we walked around another lake, this one near the city center. If I remember right, the building in the photo below is the court house.
Our final Hannover restaurant test was for lunch at the Pfannkuchen Haus (pancake house). Another yummy, large portion, that actually held us for the remainder of the day!
We made our way back to the airport, returned the car, boarded our flight & rushed back home at 7:30pm so Gerhard could play with his new video game! He is still so excited, though he has to wait till his birthday to get a new game...well, except for the offer I made him that if he cleans the garage (it is, sadly to say, a gigantic mess), I'll get him a game as an award. Somehow, I think he didn't get tempted, like I said it's a gigantic mess - really! After all, his birthday is only 3 months away, patience is a virtue, but that doesn't clean garages!
2 comments:
Sounds like a fun weekend and you have some great shots! Congratulations Gerhard!
Congratulations is right, Gerhard! Wow, a Wii. That was great. Can't wait to play against you in bowling. It sounds like you both had a good time. It was worth the wait to hear about it. Sorry you had so much trouble with the computer.
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