Another trip to another company town – Erlangen, Germany – about 30 minutes for Nurnburg. Siemens, the German counterpart to GE, moved here in 1946 from Berlin as they wanted to avoid being under Soviet control (Berlin was in East Germany, except a small section, and Erlangen was in West Germany). Siemens and a university – FAU (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität, not Florida Atlantic) have most of the adult population. As a result, it is a very nice small town with a lot of random interesting buildings.
It rained most of the time that I was there – but the weather improved right as we left work and I got about 10,000 steps walking through town. It was pretty chilly, so the fun fair was lightly attended but at the university students were hanging out in the quad.
We had dinner one night with our hosts – one of whom is the same age as I am and in 1982, when he was growing up in East Germany, didn’t do well on his high schools tests and thus was assigned to be a coal miner. He did that, with a minimal effort as possible, until the wall fell, he went to West Germany, met an American and went to college and the rest is history. Over dinner, when we were discussing capitalism versus communism, he was the one making arguments that communism had merits. It was a good trip for food as seen below. We came through Munich the day before our meetings and changed trains and thought about heading to see Bayern Munich-Manchester City in a Champions League clash – but was a little pricey.
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