There we are. Another winter is creeping through the streets of Berlin, first christmas decorations are spreading over town, the MBA batch is giving birth to 31 individual theses (involving the accompanying contractions) and it’s just as well time to give a warm and dear welcome to the new 2009 MBA batch, out of which the first happy faces show up on campus here and there.

We hope you folks will have a year just as great as ours, of course tough every now and then, but with cheerful moments and proud memories nonetheless. May in 2009 the study rooms and hallways of ESMT be buzzing with life and business discussions again. If you need support to get started, don’t hesitate to turn to this year’s batch, as everyone of us will be happy to give you assistance for a great headstart into the year and into the adventure that lies in front of you from January on!

Fabian

This is what happened to us, soon after practice project teams were revealed.  

The joy, the agony, the ‘WTF, did you read this email’ ~ all these emotions were drowned in three, no four bottles of world class wine & sekt.   

Serendipity, spontaneity, weak moments & win-win situations – that’s what makes this MBA a memorable affair…

prost, cheers, salud, gan bei, zum wohl!  

Heck Mirko, I could hate you. Well, almost. You made me cry twice at your wedding. And that is when everything was in Deustche & I didn’t understand a word being spoken.

But I guess that’s what it is about. There are some moments that have no language barriers and this was a wedding to prove it. Beautiful, simple and warm. It was, by far, one of my most memorable evenings in Berlin.

The church on a cliff by the lake. Sigh. Drinking Proseco in the garden in the church on a cliff by the lake. Double sigh.

Of course, Mirko, honey, you were so pretty - that made it even more beautiful!

Carnations with your name on it, soap bubbles, strawberries & cream, dancing with your girlfriends to retro music (fantastic by the way, compliments to the DJ please) at a summer wedding. This is stuff that Hollywood movies are made of ~ such was the evening of 26 July, 2008.

To quote Emily Dickinson:

It’s such a little thing to weep,
So short a thing to sigh;

And yet by trades the size of these

We men and women die!

To Jana & Mirko ~ Herzlichen Glückwunsch und viel Glück!

It’s here. The bergfest before the summer break.

There’s nothing that’s been so welcoming in a very long time. Sighh.

So we toast to the India trip, and we toast to the China trip. We also toast to Intopia, which we wearily went through. I’m sure that after the Sekt goes down, there’s enough learnings to made out of every moment that we spent here last week.

But for now, it’s just enough to say – have lovely summer holiday!

Cheers!

There’s so many people on the streets, you can’t walk 5 metes without bumping into some one.

People get on to the middle of the roads and start to block cars from going ahead.

The cars on the road are blowing their horns for no reason at all. Loudly. Incessantly.

There’s so much noise on the streets, you can’t hear yourself shout. People are screaming, shouting – it may also include singing.

Strangers come to you; smile widely all the while screaming. Funnily enough, you reciprocate similarly.

Where are you, you ask your self? This cannot be Germany. These cannot be Germans. Some one must have changed their genetic code!

Yeah, this happens when the Deutschland Fussball team makes them proud. The night gets magical, there’s energy, conviviality and it is catching! Amazingly enough, even the Polizei smile knowingly and let it pass.

Finale, Finale – the air resounds with this cheer. If there’s one night that you should be in Berlin, it’s this moment. Come tomorrow, there’ll be strict (and perhaps sometime mundane) efficiency again. But tonight, Berliners, Germans & friends – we all celebrate…

Post Script: Deutschland won against Turkey in the semis, but unfortunately a similar show on the streets wasn’t possible after their performance in the Finals.

Question: How many MBAs do you need to change a light bulb?
Answer: 10 and you still cannot change the light bulb, unless you hire an electrician.

Question: How many years does it take for a school to decide whether you get a coffee machine on the weekend?
Answer: So far 2 years….

If you are reading this post in 2011 and still understand what I am writing about … post a response to this post with “Amen”

There’re ironies about doing an MBA in a city that was once at the heart of socialist communist pride.

Yeah, no one will tell you that you led a dull life, at least.

You wake up in the morning, you gulp a coffee down & manage to reach a 9 AM class, even though you don’t really feel alive till after the first break. But even this terribly exciting life, replete with cracking case analysis by 6 PM the previous eve needs some food for thought.

If it’s 1 Mai in Berlin, there’s enough to go around.

In Kreuzberg, especially. Where Beck is the official sponsor of Mayday. Or so it seems. You roam around Kotbusser Tor, in search of a revolution. But unlike this good fella, you are on the wrong side of the left side.

Anarchists, punks, rebels – where are they? Down the streets of Kreuzberg – there men making bar-be-que, pretty young girls selling Mojitos & folks are swinging to deutsche hip-hop.

Despite everything though, you know there’s hope. Because there’s a sense of humor.

In the unconscious capitalistic soul of the revolutionary.

yeah, yeah, same old story you’d say.

But like Elka pointed out - - have you ever seen so much knowledge concentrated in such little space?
Yup - here’s to the most fun we’ve had in ESMT, so far, with our clothes on!

gutten appetit good people!

Stefanie is a proud mother - her 4 year old son, Linus scored a goal during our Saturday cook out plus soccer. She repeated to everyone who would hear that her son came to her and told her that he scored a goal. This was till Flavius told her “Enjoy it when it happens … In 16 years time, your son is not going to tell you when he scores….”

ha ha ha …..

If you hear “Ceeeee Yah!!!!” more often on our corridors, here is the story. That is a term now added permanently into our classes’ lexicon.

Ron Panese, our Operations Management Professor from Module 2, used it to set us free from our classes at the end of the allotted time. He had Francisco keep time for him and promised to drop whatever he was saying and would stop sharp on time. So, Francisco, the assigned time keeper printed out a “STOP” traffic sign, that he held up at the end and Ron would stop whatever he was saying, stretch his hands out to his sides like an airplane, swirl on his right heel while he yelled “Ceeeeee Yah” and Ron was 70. He looked amazingly young for his age and could give us “youngsters” a run for our money with his energy.

Ron is a visiting faculty – past retirement and if you add up all his stated years of experience, he should be atleast 3425 years old :) He had some 63 Ron Panesi’s laws and he livened up the class by dropping them once in a while. It was a sight to see him encourage Vlad with some comments like “Vlad, Baby, You are Hot” ( as in …. You are on track – keep going…) while Vlad seemed to apparently take offense, drawing his eyes in, squaring up the eyebrows and cheeks flushing red. That was the first class and then we got used to this and it was fun, atleast for me. It is difficult to cover the whole subject of Operations Management in just 20 sessions. I loved the final exams – One Case Study that took about 1 hour to read and then to describe an Operations strategy for the company in the case. I do not know what will be my grade, but I loved the final exam, nevertheless.

Of course, he also taught us the great Italian Sign Language – the flick under the chin, for those who know what I mean ;)