Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Europe Tour : Germany - Day 3

After a good rest yesterday night, morning woke up fresh and get ready to go to the train station. The itinerary for today is more relaxed and we had our breakfast at the station. I love hot chocolate and ordered a cup and we ordered the English breakfast.

Hot Chocolate with Mini Raisin Muffin

English Breakfast - Egg, Croissant, Ham, Salami, Cheese, Tomatoes, Jam, Honey & Butter


In the train I am a bit of nervous cos I am meeting up with my Unilever principal at 11.00 am at the British Business Centre for the business review meeting. Meet up with D.Leach and this young British man, always MIA and never ever reply my email since we last met in October'06. The meeting goes well although we won't be able to hit their purchases target cos I think it is just too high.

After the meeting, we started our excursion again and visited few halls. The first one we went was the chilled meat section and there are so many sampling going on and I love the cold meat like ham, bacon and salami. You can eat as much as you like. Some of it I could say is very,very good.



The HUGE and LONG Salami. BIG BOSS was making fun of me... and told me " REALLY HUGE AH"

It is almost lunch time and we went over the Japanese exhibitor hall and 4 of us had our lunch there. We wacked the SUSHI since it is FREE for sampling.

The Sushi making machine. Rolling the sushi is so easy and fast with this machine.

At about 3 pm, BIG BOSS and GM met up with Sanitarium principal for a chat since he is also over there at the fair. Me and GS didn't join them and we took some fresh air outside the hall. The weather is so lovely with bright sunlight and cool weather. But the thing I hate most is that a lot of people not only man but woman smoke outside the open area. The air is filled with cigarette smell.

I love this maple leaves

From what I observed, I think Europe has a big market for drinks. There are so many company exhibiting drinks like smoothies, juices, energy drink, beer, soft drinks, flavoured sparkling water and many more.

Look at the picture below, the way they promote their energy drinks and beer. I think they really put in a lot of money to make it BIG.


BIG BOSS saw this and interested in it. It is a 100% Smoothie drink with shelf life 12 months and it is stored in ambience temperature. This product is from Sweden and the smoothies is so nice. I even took 2 packets of the sample back for Dearie Suki to try it out. The packaging is so innovative and I was assigned by BIG BOSS to follow up with this company.

While waiting for the 3 uncles to go to the toilet, I had 3 of this fruit ice lollies. This are manufactured in Indonesia. Wah so nice. The 3 uncles dont't know where they sesat to and I waited for them about 1/2 hour.

The next meeting is scheduled at 5.30 pm with Tchibo principal at the German Business Centre. Meet up with Christian the new Export Manager who handled the Asian and Middle East market also another 'leng chai ang moh' but with no hair ( BOTAK ). It is an unformal meeting and after the meeting he brought us for dinner at Cologne town in one if the Bistro & Pub.


Dinner for tonight is good and it is more relaxed as compared to yesterday night. There are 6 of us including one of his customer from Middle East. We start off with Beer, and I had a bowl of Oxtail Soup and the rest ordered Pumpkin Soup for starter.

Clockwise from top left : Beef Steak & Grilled Prawns, Pan Fried Fish & Salad, Weiner Schitnzel.

For main course, I had the Weiner Schitnzel. It is the veal meat from the young calves coated it with breadcrumbs and deep fried till golden brown. They have some smashed potatoes to go along with it. I am actually sharing my main course with my BIG BOSS and he ordered the steak so I gave him half of mine and he gave me half of his steak. But I still prefer the fish. It taste so good and fresh but I don't know what fish is that. Looks like Ikan Bawal Hitam to me.

For dessert we had the Strawberry Tiramisu and I forgot to snap a picture of it. Too busy talking to Christian. Basically we didn't talk much about business, we talk about the lifestyle of the German people, what they eat, what they do, where they hang out and he is a German staying in Hamburg and driving a PORSCHE. Must be having good life but one thing he told me in German, the more you earn the more you need to pay the tax. That is why a lot of German people move out from German to other EU country to work in order to avoid the high tax.

Dinner over at about 8.30 pm and he send us off to the train station. Reached hotel at about 10 pm after taking bath I doze off at about 11.30 pm.

***** Germany - Day 4 coming up next *****


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