From the monthly archives:

November 2009

Grünkohl Turkey Day

26 November 2009

We’ve never gotten in the habit of celebrating American Thanksgiving here in Germany, but as I mentioned on Twitter today, by coincidence we are going out for a traditional meal this Thanksgiving evening. The local Wirtschaftsrunde (chamber of commerce, sort of) is holding their annual Grünkohl dinner. I’ve never had it, and I suspect that [...]

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And I Saw Her Standing There

17 November 2009

Since we’re being nostalgic this month, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and all that, how about we go even further back, to November 1979. The Iran hostage crisis had just begun on November 4, but I can’t recall any of the other events. A month later, the Who Concert tragedy and the Soviet [...]

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Marketing Non-Secrets 3

12 November 2009

I promised that as the marketing initiatives we learned about at our franchisee meeting in October were released, I’d mention them here. Has anyone noticed the new initiative, or more correctly, the old initiative that was rebranded this week?

Back to my letter codes: S is for “SMS”. The value menu segment (the German equivalent of [...]

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As The Wall Fell

9 November 2009

It’s strange that as the one world event that directly changed our lives, I don’t remember where I was when the Berlin Wall fell or even exactly how I heard about it.

In November 1989 we were in Chandler, Arizona, over 5000 miles from Berlin. We had moved to Arizona in May, and we didn’t yet [...]

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Don’t Be So Damned Sure!

2 November 2009

The best lesson for surviving as an expat I learned my first quarter… in fact, my first weeks at the University of Minnesota.

That lesson came early in the “Introduction to Theater” course taught by the legendary Arthur Ballet. My best friend Beth from high school was going to major in Theater, and even though I [...]

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