Cebit: Hannover

Look at the picture below, do you guys have any theory as to how they mow the lawn off of the cones?

here is another one -

Hannover I was told was on of the cities in Germany which got bombed by the allies quite significantly. The story goes that the allies could never quite reach Berlin, for some reason or another, and on their way back from their failed attempt they would drop their bombs on Hannover, a large city right on their patch back to the UK. So Hannover's architecture is both modern and old. The picture below shows one of those more modern buildings.

Cebit in pictures: con't

Now given what we hear on the news about Serbia and Kosovo, I just thought the following Serbia booth messaging was spot on!

Cebit in pictures: con't

Ok - here is the IBM booth, it's one of the biggest, SAP has probably a similar size booth but not as trendy. Green is big in Europe, companies are messaging they care about the environment. MS' Steve Ballmer even mentioned it in his keynote, that MS is greener with Vista than it was with XP, with it reduced power consumption etc.

Ok now what about the food! Here you go - So on the left hand side is the typical sausages they can serve with sauce, and on the right hand side is pork with breadcrumbs(or what seems to be).

CEBIT - part II - different country con't

Ok we're in a different country - you wake up at 6am to go to the gym, because you won't have time to go tonight or any nights for that matter. the gym hours are from 9am to 9pm every day except for Tuesday and Thursday where it's from 7am to 9pm. This is quite a contrast with our gym culture in North America where they are open pretty much all the time. I guess over here people work out at lunch time or after work, not before work.

 

Note to self - check out gym hours the night before I plan to go!

planes+line-ups

Have you ever been in a plane where the minute we touch the gate upon landing, everybody rushes for the aisle and get their stuff out of the overhead bin? The door to exit the plane is not even open, and everyone is inline in the aisle waiting to get out. Now why am I writing about this, it bugs me. The sooner one gets in the aisle doesn't mean one will get out of the plane sooner. People do let you in the line when it starts moving. so why does it bug me? well when you have an aisle seat and the people next to you toward the window pushes on to you to get up and in aisle jungle it bugs me that I have to explain they won't get out quicker if they are in the aisle now versus 3min from now.

Vegetables and Fruits Stands

In Yerevan again - things are different, but it's not just language, how people look, dress, or the way buildings are constructed. Every where in the city one can find those little vegetables and fruits stands. For one stands it will be a truck full of cabbages, I've never seen cabbages that big, for another one it's going to be pomegranates, bananas and tomatoes on a table. Another one was a table with various vegetables, and then an open car trunk full of apples.

The super markets "à la Canada" they don't exist, or I should say are not nearly as common and much smaller. The fruits and vegetables I'm talking about are the equivalent of small neighbourhood boutiques, it's neat. The customer experience is very personalized, you're likely to live in the same building or neighbourhood as your customers, it's more personal, people talk around the stands while they buy. My armenian is non existent, so people there may just be trading punches about the quality of the products, but somehow I don't think that is what is going on - it's probably more like "how is so-and-so kiddo and his cold, getting any better?"