Europe Part Final (VII)

Day 10
After checking out of the Niemeyer Posthotel, we hit the road and headed back for Round 2 of Hannover Fair. My feet sure had a good night's rest, now it's time for another day of abuse.

Guess what I saw at the Hannover Fair?


It's huge! What is it?


That's right... It's a TURBINE from a BOEING 747!!! According to my friend who works on passenger airplanes at Toronto Pearson Airport, a single fin of that thing costs $250,000 CAD!!

I also encountered the largest tie I've seen in my life! Just look at it compared to mine!


We also found a new competitor, but I believe that we are no match for them. Because they make shit for FERRARI.




There were also a lot of windmill manufacturers displaying their stuff... When I meant displaying their stuff, I really mean DISPLAYING their stuff in LIFESIZE.



Hannover Fair was definitely one of its kind. Companies can spend up to millions just displaying their stuff.

There are tons more on my facebook albums, for more pics just go to my facebook!

Then we decided to leave and head back to Frankfurt. We had a flight to go back to China tomorrow.

We got to Frankfurt, checked into a Best Western hotel. Ate at a nearby Sushi restaurant. Then we went to sleep.

Day 11
We decided that today would be a good time to go shopping since we had a few hours before our flight. After driving around and finding some nice shopping spots. Here's what I ended with...

Ecco Dress shoes
Hugo Boss wallet
Porsche Design wallet
Porsche Design shoes

They were CHEAP in Europe compared where anywhere else such as Canada and China. I definitely want to go back and shop some more!

Sorry for lack of pictures, I didn't remember to take any while being so excited for shopping all these stuff. Oh yes, I'm a bit of a shopacholic if some of you didn't know :).

Europe Part 6

Day 9

Woke up in the morning, had good breakfast again at the Osterhaus hotel in Osnabruck. Then we hit the road to Hannover.

Upon arriving, I was astounded by the amount of TRAFFIC and LIMITED parking spots. Luckily, after driving around for a while, we found an area that had plenty of parking spaces, although quite a long walk.

So we used our E-tickets and headed straight to Hall 25, which is drivetrain section. Our specialty. Our job was to check the competition and future possible collaboration with other companies. It was quite an amazing sight to see upon entering. It was much bigger than the Shanghai PTC show that I attended back in November.

A view from 2nd floor catwalk:

Upon walking a few metres, I found something I just HAD to try:

A go-kart simulator!
Unfortunately, it was quite disappointing. Pedals don't work, it was very unrealistic and very boring. BOO off we go!

But this little monkey was quite entertaining!

It was lifting weights!
Powered by the little electronic motor underneath, it was quite a funny sight.

So we walked around for a few hours, checked out other driveshaft manufacturers' booth. After that we got tired and the exhibition was closing soon. Who knew there'd be so much walking and especially when we were wearing pretty uncomfy dress shoes, damn!

So then... We had a huge problem... All the hotel in the area was fully booked or ridiculously expensive (about 350 EURO!!). After calling around, we found a place called "Niemeyers Posthotel". It was decent 110 EURO for a night. One problem... it was 75km and 1 hour and half away because of no highway. But we had no choice, so off we go!

On the road to the hotel, we encountered some nice sunset scenery.


This little single lane road... had no speed limit... That VW in front of me was going 160km/h, I was just keeping up with traffic :)


Passed by this little nice town, but we still had a long way to go...



Finally, we arrived at the hotel. Checked in. It was pretty nice, I'd say probably 5 star rating due to service and room quality, not bad for 110 Euro.

But it was 10pm already and we had not eaten dinner yet so we were a starving.

We walked to next door a little restaurant. But for the love of god, dammit I can't remember the name. I was served with probably the best food I've ever had in Europe!



It consisted of two pieces of pork, one piece of beef with vegetables in a pan. Then we also had a separate pan of Potato Skillets. Each piece of meat had their own sauce, as you ate along, the sauces slowly started to get mixed together adding on to the taste. Goddamn, it was SO good. Blogging about this is making me hungry... damn.

After stuffing ourselves, we headed back to the hotel and called it a day.

Europe Part V!

Sorry for the lack of update, I was really busy in Toronto. I'll blog on that later. Then when I returned to China, I found out that blogging websites got blocked by the government! NO WTFFFF

Luckily, I did a little researching and found a loophole and here I am! For security and privacy reason, I will not disclose this little loophole. But if you browse enough Chinese forums, you will find the answers.

Day 7
We had ONE more final company to visit. CSN Wichmann, a pretty famous German driveshafts company.

But they were located in Osnabruck, which was about 2 hours drive (or less with the no speed limit =P)

First thing we did was check into a hotel, we had an appointment to meet up with them 9 am in the next morning.

This hotel was a nice place, it was private hotel business run by a very very kind German old guy. It was historical style and yet flushed with modern standards. But dammit, I have no pictures to show for it. I must keep in mind to take more pictures. I really need a dedicated camera. Cell phone camera sucks and kills the battery too much!

So after checking in, we decided to walk around and Chuntan was pretty much amazed by the beauty of the area. We were located in the residential area, very nice one too. Every house was well designed and constructed and they all had very lovely gardens. Chuntan even witness something he had never seen before... A WATER SPRINKLER!

Plain old one that goes back and forth. He was so amazed by it. I was laughing SO hard, how ancient can China be???? But then again, China's not very good at having gardens.

So we walked further, and found a nice little park with bike trails. It was definitely not a small park, bike trails goes as far as 20 km according to the map! Unfortunately... no pictures here either...

Then we went back decided to go eat dinner. Chuntan decided to take me to where CSN took him last time he was there. A Chinese buffet. After fumbling with the internet and looking for the address of the place, we headed there. Dammit, it was DEFINITELY worth the trouble to find this place. Buffet food had wide variety that I had never seen, they had teppanyaki too! On top of that, they were GOOD. We were SO stuffed after eating that. Costed about 15 Euro per person. It was quite hard to walk afterwards, that's how full we got.

Trip back to hotel was very hard, especially driving stick with such a full stomach. The pushing of the clutch just pushes on my stomach and makes me uncomfy haha.

Finally got to the hotel, waited a while for the food to settle then went to bed.

Day 8: CSN WICHMANN!
So got up early in the morning, damn... this hotel's breakfast is amazing. I love German breakfast, they taste good and are very healthy!

Drove to CSN. This is what KILLED me. We had a meeting. Not just any meeting. It was EIGHT FREAKING HOURS LONG!!!

After the meeting... this is all I had to show for it:

Picture with Mr. Osterhaus, General Manager of CSN.

I've decided to call this a Nazi Company because:
1. They made me have a meeting for 8 hours
2. They wanted everything done THEIR way
3. They're German, LOL

But I still can't complain, they gave the company tons of revenue in the past couple of years.

After the meeting, we decided to head back to the hotel and take a break. Damn... that was a good break. Then for dinner... we went to the same buffet as yesterday. Wow, still tastes as good as yesterday, but this time, we were more precautious. We took it easy and did not stuff our stomach until it felt like exploding =P.

Tomorrow, we were to head to Hannover for the Hannover Fair. Which is the largest exhibition in the world with over 6000 exhibitors! I was definitely looking forward to it.

New Layout

I always wondered why my old template only showed part of the picture and in portrait style when I posted pics. Then I realized it was the template always cutting it out. Now this new template reveals the entire pictures, whoohoo! Enjoy the blogging guys!

Europe Part Quatre

Day 5:

We headed out of Erfurt early in the morning and drove half an hour north to Stadilm to visit Gewes, a well known driveshaft manufacturer for smaller sizes. Upon arriving, I was really amazed at the SIZE of this place.

Unfortunately, this was the only picture I could get as they didn't allow pictures. Lots of secret information being hidden eh... Had a nice meeting with Mr. Tschop and Mr. Roder and got a tour of the plant, man... we were tired of walking this 100,000 sq m area afterwards...

Then we hit the road and headed to...

HAMBURG!

We were heading to visit SASS, another small driveshaft company just as a courtesy visit. However, it was already late by the time we got to Hamburg. But the CEO of SASS was kind enough to book us a hotel at a lovely little place called Fausthaus Seebergen.

This was a very nice little place with a pond and located in the middle of the forest. But... not my type, I'm more of a city guy. This place was too quite and has weird noises at night! Sure enough... we checked out the next morning.


Day 6
We headed to SASS and what ya know? It's not that small after all...

Not as big as ours but still big enough for such a small company. Keep in mind, this was a Saturday and to our surprise, the CEO Mr. Reimers had a meeting with us today at his company. Gave us a nice tour and I was really amazed by how advanced their system for running the company was for such a small company. It makes me embarassed about our company compared to this.

So after the meeting, Mr. Reimers took us to a little cafe nearby where he claims has the best clubs in the area. Well.... see for yourself...

Mine was a club full of cheese, ham, tomato and lettuce. When I meant full of... I mean FULL OF! This thing was HUGE I should have put a hand next to the sandwich for comparison.

Chuntan and Mr. Reimers got a BLT...

It's also quite a large size... But of course, we couldn't finish the fries after the club. My stomach felt like it was going to explode afterwards.

Then we said farewells and headed to Hamburg. I mean Hamburg downtown. SASS was located just outside of Hamburg. Mr. Reimer had originally planned to take us to the Baltic Sea on his boat, but his boat wasn't completed yet so we went to Hamburg downtown instead. Stayed at a little hotel called Eden. It looked pretty ghetto, but it was actually quite nice... and... it had FREE WI-FI!!! OMG!! FREE WI-FI!!!

Normally in Europe... they charged $8 EUR/HR for wi-fi... curse you T-mobile!!

Had dinner at a Paulanzer restaurant. I had 3 fish with potato skillet. That was pretty good, 3 different kind of fishes, each with their own sauce and taste... *drools* Too bad I had no picture of that.

Then we walked around Hamburg...

This little boat is actually a restaurant! Who'd thunk of that!?

River leading to the Baltic Sea.

Hamburg Train Station. I'd call it more of a shopping mall than a train station due to the vast amount of stores.

Our feet were really tired afterwards, so we walked back to the hotel and called it a day.

Wowzer, no updates?

Been pretty busy lately. I just got to Toronto a few days ago from the states. Wow... it's all been partying and tons of welcome back dinners and such. I haven't even had time to finish my report regarding the states to give to the company. DAMN! No time for blogging either! aiii

Let's see the blogging agenda.
Finish Europe trip blog
Write USA trip blog
Write Toronto trip blog

Hmm... lots of writing I see. Will try to keep on top of things. I'm hoping not to lose my memory of these trips to provide more details! Good thing I started the US notes offline when I had free time, so that helps.

Alright... keep checking back!

Europe Part Three!

Day4: Continued...

So we're on our way to Erfurt, Germany. Now Germany is quite a beautiful country as well!

Fields of Green


On the look out?

80 Zone, on streets with plenty of curves. German sure knows how to drive, no idiot drivers wandering left and right on turning, unlike *ahem*Tan*ahem* HAHA

So then we finally arrive Erfurt. Very nice little town, found a Best Western, as I mentioned before, it was tourist season, so we got our room for $105 EUR, at least it includes breakfast! And a cool staircase..

Spiral anyone?

Then we went to grab a bite to eat... surprisingly I can't recall where or what I had. Maybe we didn't eat? I'll remember later...

So after looking at the tourist guide, we decided to visit Schloss Molsdorf (German for Molsdorf Palace). Quite old, but very beautiful place. Some royalty used to live there, I have no idea how of the history, but google yielded me this

"Count Gustav Adolf von Gotter (1692-1762) had this lovely Baroque palace built between 1734 and 1740. Schloss Molsdorf, located near Erfurt, is not just a significant architectural site, but its history is equally engaging: Count Gotter, who was famous for his amorous excesses, celebrated many elaborate parties here between 1733 and 1748."

How interesting! Now I'll let pictures do the talking. Only some pics are posted, the rest are all on my facebook!

Mind you, that this place is very old and has a LOT of trees. Very very tall ones... Look below to see what I mean...

This is Tan standing next to the tree! He's only two cm shorter than me!

So after walking around and enjoying how peaceful this place was. We decided to head to Erfurt (Schloss Molsdorf is about 20 min drive away, just outside Erfurt).

After looking at our trusty tourist guide again, we decided to look for the famed bridge. It was a 120m long bridge (I know eh, not that special). But what's special about it is that it has houses constructed on the bridge and is occupied for a few centuries! How cool!

Walking a little more and we get this...

We decided that it was dinner time, stopped by at a Italian place. Of course... First serving was definitely best serve!


Some local German beer!! Had some Weizbierer (Wheat Beer).

While we were waiting for our dishes to arrive, took some pics the surroundings

Our dishes finally arrives!

My tortellini!! YUM!

Tan's dish! Spaghetti with Olive oil and pepper!

Digging in!

During our time in Erfurt that day. We noticed it was quite odd that there quite an unusual amount of police all around the city...

Over time we we ate our meal, more and more police started gathering as if there was a war going on. Later on, we found out why...

There was a PROTEST going on caused by some hundreds local university students. We had no idea what they were rioting about until the next day our customer that we visited informed us. They were complaining about a construction company planning to take down some historical architectures of Erfurt, a lot of students here are very emotionally attached to these historical pieces. So it was understandable. It was certainly quite a view as we watched them March by.

Upon walking further, we found something interesting...

Cops around here drive BMW and Benz's! Man.. talk about luxury!

We then called it a night and walked back to our hotel and peaced out.

I will write about Day 5 in the next post. Keep checking back!