Here’s the report on our amazing German speaking motivation weekend:
On Thursday evening our guests from the IAAS committees in Hohenheim, Switzerland and the committee to be in Austria arrived at our accommodation nearby Bonn. We even had a representative from Slovenia. In a group of about 30 people there where some familiar faces and also many new ones! We started with homemade pizza and some games to get to know each other.
After breakfast the next day we drove to ‘Grafschafter’, a factory that is known in Germany for its sugar beet syrup. We had a guided tour and learned that there is a job called mud estimator where your only but important task is to calculate how much dirt is on the delivered beets in order to get the real weight. This tour was continued by a second breakfast with all their different varieties of bread spreads (not only out of sugar beets but all kinds of fruits) – delicious!
Later on we went to Lely, a company in Cologne that produces robots for dairy farms. The speaker was very qualified and engaged and gave us a diverse overview of the offered services and products. Back home the preparation for the Trade Fair started – luckily we had a big kitchen! It’s impressive how many different kinds of food you get from such few countries that at the first sight may seem very similar… Well, as you all can imagine it turned out being a merry evening. :D
Saturday we started with the mandatory organising stuff of IAAS Germany while having an ample and extensive brunch. And even if everyone was tired from the previous evening we mobilised our strength to go on a hiking trip on the other side of the Rhine to a castle and an old ruin – congratulations to everyone who really made it to the top!! The great sight and quiet nature made up for the tiring walk that was followed by a sightseeing tour through Bonn. All this walking was rewarded with some really good burgers at an Irish pub.
To crown the day we did a rally through the bars in the historic centre. Each group had to fulfil tasks to find the right bar. Among other things we delighted pedestrians with different singing performances. Later we all met up in one bar. After an eventful bus ride home we had a second Trade Fair with leftovers.
We fell in our beds just to wake up what felt like minutes later. And to make sure nobody forgot in which part of Germany we were everyone was waked by noisy carnival songs – anyone there who can imagine a more loving awakening?!
Everything left to do after breakfast was the sad part of saying goodbye – hopefully for not too long! We really enjoyed having you here. For some it was the first and for others another great IAAS experience!
In the end there is to say that we had a lot of fun, an exciting (agri-)cultural program and that we were always more than in time – the very least you can expect from a German speaking group! :D
Looking forward to a reunion next year! Maybe with a newly found committee in Vienna?!
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