LOCAL NEWS
Hello again from Deutschland! I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and readying themselves for the Christmas season and Hanukkah festivities. I am sure the Plaza Lights are shining brightly and I can report that the German Christmas Markets are incredibly tempting. I must say, the pressure is on to be erudite in my writings here after all the kind responses from the October edition. I found myself thinking all the time about what I may write as I walk and commute around the city. I started a Google Docs for random thoughts and let’s just say I will refrain from every little observation like; what is the deal with all these people wearing NASA shirts?!
It has now been two months since I landed and I feel very settled into life here in Munich. There are only a couple administrative tasks left to accomplish like driver’s license, health insurance and the resident permit, which are all part of a Catch-22. To get the resident permit you need insurance, to get insurance you need a job, to get a job you need a resident permit! For most things German, the rules, forms and requirements are quite cumbersome but I have found a certain flexibility once you talk with a live person. At the end of the day, it all has to be done and all the boxes need to be checked but the order can vary. Nothing moves fast here so a level of patience is absolutely key. For example, I heard that if an email is not a priority it is acceptable to let it sit for a week, which I frequently experience.
Other local news includes me getting locked out of my apartment one Sunday evening. I knew this day was coming and for brevity sake let’s just keep to the fact that my door automatically locks once I walk out. I had to call a locksmith to perform a 3 second maneuver. And of course, he didn’t take a credit card and I didn’t have enough cash on me, so my new best friend and I had to take a 20 minute walk to an ATM for his 119€ fee! He said I was lucky and that most guys charge 500€ on a Sunday. Lucky me! I am now almost full OCD like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets when leaving my apartment; I put my foot in a certain place, jiggle the key in my hand, repeat some nonsense in my head and when I return I go through another routine. (Another really German thing is that all apartment keys in Munich are registered. Copying the key is certainly not allowed and you could face serious costs if it is lost to rekey an entire complex, but I have bought insurance to protect me for such a debacle. Germans love their insurance!)
The biggest event to report though is for the first time in over 34 years someone else has cut my hair other than the great Tony Merlo. It was recommended that I go visit Göksel the Turk in Schwabing. I was so nervous! Luckily though Göksel had a warm and friendly demeanor and after we got past the language barrier, he did a great job and I now have my barber in Munich! I doubt though I will be following many local icons and dignitaries in the chair like at Tony’s.
I did make another quick trip down to Tegernsee when the sun peaked out for a hike and to see more of the town. There are many options in Bavaria to enjoy the outdoors but I wanted to get the logistics down for Tegernsee to have an easy jaunt out of the city for when a respite is needed.
I visited Schloss Nymphenburg for an afternoon which is within Munich proper but outside the City Center. The Nymphenburg is no Versailles but it was a little surreal to step off the S-Bahn and take a short stroll to this area. Hard to put it to words but the surrealness was a mixture of not growing up in a country with palaces but visiting many of them throughout Europe and now having one in my new city. As I strolled through the park and glanced up this alley pictured here I thought this would be a really nice Par 5 if the State of Bavaria wanted to capitalize on the property.
THANKSGIVING IN SALZBURG
Since there was no chance to celebrate a family filled Thanksgiving I decided to get out of town and take the train southeast to Salzburg for the day. The most touristy thing to do is the Sound of Music tour which came highly recommended as a good way to see the city. In preparation I watched the movie, which I had never seen, the night before to get some context. When I saw the 2 hours 54 minute duration I didn’t think I had it in me but I got in the mood and enjoyed it. To watch musicals and ballets I believe you must free yourself of seeking a shocking or hilarious moment for the next two-plus hours and simply relax and enjoy the music and visuals.
Formal tours have never been my thing and unfortunately this one did not change my attitude. There were a couple highlights and interesting antidotes, but otherwise I could have used the four hours much better. I also visited Mozart’s birthplace and residence and that was certainly worth the price of admission. And lastly, I went up to the Festung Hohensalzburg, which again was worth seeing such an impressive structure and it had great views of Salzburg, the valley and mountains.
SCHOOL
To clarify my schedule a little bit, I am only in class six straight days per month so I was back in the saddle in the later part of the month. This module was on leadership and I found the discussions very engaging and several of the lecturers both impressive and fun. After just two modules my cohort is jelling and I continue to have interesting discussions about America. From a business perspective, the Germans are very conscious about their lack of new and big innovative companies. As I understand it, if a German company is tasked with trying to overcome competition their attitude is to design and engineer something better, versus in America we ask what the customer wants and go all in with loving the customer. Germans are hung up on engineering, which they are the best at, but inspiring people, not so much. It seems TUM is really trying to pump some of that American spirit and entrepreneurship into leaders here so more unicorns come out of this country.
I also kicked off my German classes at TUM which include two sessions per week plus my own personal efforts with a tandem partner and going to language exchange events. I feel good about where I am with the language but still really struggle with verbal interactions. Slowly but surely I will figure this out. I am not back in the MBA class until February but I have a large group project due in January plus a paper on leadership so plenty to keep me busy.
NIGHT AT THE BALLET
I wanted to experience a proper Munich performance and visit the Bayerische Staatsoper so one Saturday night I put on the suit and went to the ballet. The performance was Alice in Wonderland and it was quite the production. My suspicions were confirmed later after reading a review expressing that this was a very expensive production. It has been showing since mid-2017 to amortize the huge costs I assume. With that said, the facility was very classical but pales in comparison to the Kauffman Performing Art Center. We are extremely blessed to have such a facility and I proudly show images of it when trying to showcase the excellence of Kansas City. I was surprised a city like Munich did not have a state-of-the- art center and after some exploring I found info on the planned but yet to be started Konzerthaus München in the Werksviertel District (Munich’s closest thing to The Crossroads).
ST. URSULA IN SCHWABING
After visiting a couple Catholic parishes I definitely found my home at St Ursula’s in the Schwabing area. I did attend the sole English speaking Catholic church in the city and it was certainly nice to understand everything and the priest had a couple good thoughts but the space was simply part of an office building and the music was too folksy for me. Even though St Ursula’s is German, what I love about being a Catholic is being able to walk into any church across the globe and know the general structure of the mass. Also attending a German church will only help immerse me in the language. My current goal is to be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer in German. St. Ursula’s is a grand church, the organ booms and the congregation seemed very familiar to Visitation so I feel at home there.
To further explain my assimilation into Germany I was asked upon registration at the state if I was Catholic. I pondered this for a moment and knew full well that by checking this box I would be facing the infamous German church tax of 9%. Even though I have zero income at the moment the financial impact definitely concerns me in the future. More importantly though I recognized that God so far has been on myside (and yes always will be....) and to tempt fate otherwise and so blatantly reject my faith I marked YES.
37 YEAR OLD INTERN
Speaking of zero income, I did land a nice little internship with KPMG (kah-pay-em-gee in German) to work in their real estate department. I think there is something poetic here:
Twins grow up together and graduate from KU Twin sister gets job at KPMG in KC Twin brother gets job at CTMT in KC KC Twin sister moves to Grand Cayman Twin brother moves to Germany Twin sister on verge of partner at KPMG Twin brother makes internship at KPMG
I really could not ask for anything more. It is in the real estate sector; I am going to get paid to learn about the German market; I am joining an international firm and will get accustomed to the German working environment. Start date is not for a while as I still work through the aforementioned resident permit.
RANDOM OBSERVATIONS
As I wander the streets of Munich I am fascinated by the process of keeping the grounds tidy. First, I have not seen or heard a lawn mower yet. The grass yards certainly do not have the thick lushness of those in America and they seem to be genetically engineered to not grow past a short and scrappy length. Up close, the grass consists of about 30% weed but from a distance it is a nice green carpet.
The process of picking up leaves is a mystery too. I believe the city does a fair amount of the work after people push leaves into a pile for pick up. No constant large noisy blowers but rather small battery-operated ones at times. There is a small army of city workers that sweep the streets and sidewalks who are then followed by a small brush/vacuum vehicle to pick up the debris. (FYI, rules are still in place for no noises on Sundays. Depending on your view of personal freedoms this could be good or bad. One could say I should have the right to mow my yard whenever I want, but another could say, I should have the right to live in peace and quiet and not hear your noisy blower/mower. I always held a 9:00 am rule on Saturdays and 12:00 pm on Sundays but I am not going to argue with the relatively peacefulness here on Sundays.)
One of my routes home from WeWork takes me by the Steinway & Sons store and I get to observe their beautiful instruments. I popped in one evening to inquire about the piano shown above which retails for 208,000€ but has the ability to play back music exactly how a concert pianist would press the keys.
I continue to wrap my head around this economy. At times it feels and looks just like America but there are some marked differences. The cost of groceries is so much cheaper here. I can get a canister of cherry tomatoes for 0.99€; or cup of yogurt for less than 1.00€ but most shocking are the Nespresso pods. The small espresso size in the States cost around $1.10 each. Here they are 0.29€! Yes, it takes $1.11 for one Euro but these grocery prices do not have a sales tax on top of the list price we see in U.S. stores.
What tells me though we are in different economy is my simple wire-bound school notebook. It says Made in Germany and only costs 2.29€. It is made of sturdy paper and has a complex perforation. To get such a notebook Made in America, it would be a novelty product and likely priced around $7.00. The company behind this specific product is one of the thousands of Mittelstand companies that drive the German economy. I see the Made in Germany in lots of small everyday products. How and why this is possible warrants a separate column and much more investigating.
BOOK REVIEW
As mentioned earlier I visited Prospero’s on 39th Street before I left Kansas City and came across A Mosque in Munich: Nazis, the CIA, and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West by Ian Johnson. Not only was the Munich setting appealing but I do have an interest in the Middle East. In general, I thought it was a very good read and helped me understand a little more about why there are so many Muslims in Germany but also helped further frame up our long history of conflict in the Middle East region. To give a very simple explanation on the high Muslim population in Germany – In essence many of the Central Asian Muslims (the Stans which was under Soviet rule) switched alliances mid-war to the Nazis whom “promised” them independent states after the war. When the Nazis fell the Allied Forces sent many of these fighters to POW camps in Germany and due to the post war chaos they stayed. Furthermore, this book showcases how our once extreme fear of Communism and attempt to thwart it caused many of our past and current foreign mishaps. Communism is bad to say the least but the price we have paid to fight it since post WWII has been extremely costly and in my humble opinion we over played our hand. (The most obvious example was our support of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan who were fighting the Soviets in the 1980s who then morphed into Al-Qaeda.)
On a lighter note though! I am currently reading Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JP Morgan Chase by Duff McDonald. I do not typically read business books but I am searching for role model in business and my little exposure to Dimon suggested this biography would be worthwhile. It is was written in 2009 so it touches on the Great Recession but it is interesting to view it through today’s lens and realize how much the business world has changed in just 10 years. The book is generally a hagiography on Dimon but also has been very complementary to my leadership class.
I also recently subscribed to Foreign Affairs a bi-monthly magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations. It is fair to say I have a strong interest in the subject especially in a U.S–German/Franco–Turkish sphere. I think I have said enough for this newsletter and will reserve further foreign policy comments for later editions.