Every year SAP
has "Kick Off" meetings for their various organizations
(development, counsulting, etc.) The developers kick off meeting was
held this year in Frankfurt Germany (the financial center of
Germany). It was scheduled for Tuesday February 7th and
Wednesday the 8th. We (myself, my boss and another guy from
work) flew out Monday afternoon around 4pm. It was a seven hour
fifty minute flight, so we landed about midnight our time. With
Germany being six hours ahead, it was 6am their time. Luckily we
were able to check into the hotel that morning, take showers and
head off to the conference. With keynote speakers, breakout
sessions, dinner and entertainment, the day ran till about 11:00
that night.
Besides drinking lots of coffee, I'd periodically
go outside and walk around to try and wake up. This was a giant
statue in front of the conference center. I didn't get over to it to
read any plaques or anything, but it cool enough. The arm with
the hammer was mechanized and moved up
and
down.
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Here's
the conference center we were
in.
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The setting over Frankfurt
from my hotel room. Wednesday after the conference we headed out on
the town. Before the trip I did a little
research and found the
area of Sachsenhausen was pretty good for restaurants and pubs, so
that's where we headed. I forget the number of
bars we hit or
the amount of beer we drank, but it was another long day.
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Another shot (to the south) from my hotel
room.
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On Thursday we drove
down to Waldorf where the SAP head offices are for some meetings.
This was the office we took over for the day. The
head offices
are pretty cool. They've got huge coffee machines (and the staff to
run them) everywhere. I think there's three thousand people
located at this site. All the tall buildings you see through the
window were additional SAP offices at the campus.
After our
meetings, we went out to Sachsenhausen again. This time we went to
the old section, where cars can't drive and the pubs are
more
densely poplulated, though we only visited one pub and one
restuarant this time. We started at this Irish pub to get some
Guinesses
(contrary to the stereotype German beer, at least in
Frankfurt, isn't that good). Right away we learned that the bar
tender was nuts (in line
with the Irish stereotype). Before we
got too messed up, we went down the street and had some food, then
went back to the Irish bar. Next
thing I know the bartenders are
giving me a shot of Absinthe, then for all shots of Jagermister,
then something with tobasco sauce. It was
getting crazy quick. Luckily my boss had enough
sense to throw some money on the bar and get us out of
there.
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