An evening out in Frankfurt

03/07/06

I was down in the Eschborn office for our quarterly marketing meeting. The meeting is a great way to learn waht other regions are up to, exchange ideas and make sure I'm not going off-track or lagging behind. I am a bit more customer-focused than my colleagues; but I can see positive results, like customers purchasing our new/other product ranges. I like my boss sales philosophy and I believe that my work is more effective to meet the objectives.

Anyway, Maria and Rudiger promised us that they would take us out of Eschborn and into Frankfurt, so I had packed my camera. Frankfurt is a very modern city, with many skyscrappers. It reminded me of Malaysia. And the tour guide was obsessed about the Jews, she kept mentioning the jewish population and talked lengthly about the synagogue; is it remorse? Do they try to over-compensate by showing that they care about the Jews? Oh well, what's in the past is past... I wonder if Tante Madeleine ever forgot and forgave?

Moving on with the tour. We ended up in the old city centre, which was in fact completely destroyed in 1943 and rebuild according to the original style. That place was quite lovely. We paused in front of the town hall, like a well-behaved group of tourist. (From left to right: Torsten, Beth, Estelle, Rudiger, Me, Carrina and Fabrizio)

That church, called St Barthelomew Cathedral, has quite an interesting history (it is in fact a church and not a cathedral, because no bishop ever lived there); during the bombings of 1943, the whole church was destroyed to the exception of the tower, which is wonderful, it would have been such a waste if it had been destroyed. They only had to rebuild the annexes.

We walked along the Maine river to have dinner in a restaurant overlooking the river. Dinner was cool, I chatted with Jun about Tokyo and Manga films and about travel and parenting with Maria and Torsten; Jun and I share the same problem that the day after we got married our parents started expecting grand-children. We had a good laugh.