The last day...

It was a rainy day (again) but nevertheless we started our sightseeing tour through Dresden.
At 8.00 a.m. we had an one hour tour with Cornelia Reimann at the town’s landmark, the famous “Frauenkirche” of Dresden. We climbed up to the top of the church and learned some facts about the architectural style the historical background of the rebuilding and the long tradition of the church.

Following Cosima Curth guided us through other parts of Dresden and we were shown the most important points of interest of that old and history-charged town. For instance, we saw the “Semperoper”, the “Fürstenzug” or the “Taschenbergpalais“. A further stop was at the artwork of Vinzenz Wanitschke that shows the universe with its planets which should remind us of the bastions of the fortification of Dresden.

Mrs. Curth added some funny slogans with her howe-grown Saxon accent and answered our questions to the town. The tour ended at the “Zwinger” of Dresden.

VW Phaeton

We returned to our accommodation the “Cityherberge” and left it again at about 11 a.m. for the next visit at the “Gläserne Manufaktur” of Volkswagen. After we were split up into two groups we were guided through the whole manufacturing halls and could get an impression of how complex the car constructions of the “Phaeton” are. Moreover we could notice that VW does a lot for the health of their employees, as they have parquet floor in the manufacturing halls or relieving instruments for the installation, for example.

Gläserne Manufaktur

At 2 p.m. we started our journey back to Mannheim where we arrived at about 9 p.m.

It was an amazing Summer School with lots of interesting visits, a full programme, less sleep and great people!

A special thanks to Mrs. Ling, she made all these photos!

Long way home (short blog entry)

Today we spent most of the day in the bus - driving back to Germany. We had a short rest in Wroclaw where we had time for lunch. In the evening we reached our destination - Dresden!

Rain and chocolates

The Wawel Dragon

Our Guide

Although it was raining, we had a guided tour through Kraków - by foot. We went to the wawel hill, the ancient residency of the polish kings. The wawel hill is home of the The Wawel Dragon, a famous dragon in Polish folklore. We also went to the Wawel Cathedral.
After visiting the wawel hill we walked through the old town where we stopped at St. Mary's Basilica. Every hour a trumpet signal is played from one of the towers. You can even here it in the radio!











After the guided tour we went to Wawel S.A., one of the oldest confectionery plants in Poland. Ms. Kierach, the Marketing Director of Wawel, told us many facts about the company. When we arrived at the company (we had to drive approx. 30 minutes to Dobczyce) Ms. Kierach and the director of production Mr. Winkel showed us around (we even had the chance to try some chocolates). We were surprised how much manual labour is still used in this company! After being guided through the production we stopped at one of the Wawel shops where we could buy chocolates. Very delicious!

Auschwitz, journey to Kraków

The day started early again.
On 7.00 a.m. we started our journey to Auschwitz, the biggest concentration and extermination camp network of the Nazis.
More than 1.1 million people were killed there, most of them were Jews. It was really depressing, especially when we saw the people's belongings, but we were glad that we saw this part of the Germany history. I think it's very difficult to put this experience into words

After visiting the area of the camp, we continued our trip to Kraków where we slept two nights.

PwC, National Soccer Stadium, Farewall Dinner

From 10 to 12 a.m. we visited PricewaterhouseCoopers in Warsaw.
In front of the giant building we had an amazing greeting with people singing and dancing in traditional costume. Up in the offices there was a pianist performing “Chopin” due to a ceremonial occasion.

Anne von Loeben works in the tax & legal department and presented us some facts about the company. PwC in Eastern Europe is represented in 30 countries with 8400 employees in 47 offices. The biggest customers are ArcelorMittal and Gazprom. German mandators are Bosch, Volkswagen, Metro Group, Bayer and Boehringer Ingelheim, for example. It’s evident that lots of German medium-sized enterprises invest in Polen.

In Poland they have established 6 facilities over the last 20 years, each with at least one German speaking employee. 52% of the employees are women and the average age is about 33 years.

The service sectors of PwC comprise auditing, tax consulting & legal advice and other advisory activities.

 Following the visit at PwC we had a conducted tour at the new National Soccer Stadium at 1 p.m.. We were the first group ever that was shown the stadium which is still under construction. So prepared with safety shoes, helmets and neon yellow warning vests we started the two-hour tour.
We were shown the electricity, the irrigation system, VIP stands and the transport halls for the players as well as the immense tribune for about 55.000 visitors. We all got an impression of how much work it is to build such a stadium with circa 1200 workers and that there are still so many details left besides the first outside impression of a football stadium. It will be finished in the end of november this year.

 After returning to our hotel we all met together at the restaurant “Folk Gospoda” at 7 p.m., where Mr. Kornmeier and Mr. Ling had organized an amazing farewell dinner with some agents of companies we have already visited, like from the BASF or PwC, the German ambassador in Warsaw and construction managers of Imtech, the contracting business at the National Football Stadium. It was a harmonic atmosphere and a great opportunity for all of us to talk again to some agents while eating and drinking.

More lectures at Kozminski

As there was no coach available today we took the tram to Kozminski University where our 1^st lecture in Accounting started at 9:00 a.m.. John Mulenga gave us an animating introduction into the major activities of accounting and talked about the basic forms of business organization as well as the “Weiss consultancy”, for example. At 12:00 a.m. we concluded with a case study adopting some equations and formulas.

After a nice lunch break with pizza and Coke in the hall of fame of the university we startet our next lecture in Risk Management at 1:00 p.m.. Anna Pikos, a young graduate of the Kominiski University told us something about what risk is associated with and what types of risks we could also face in our daily life. Moreover we learned the correct risk terms and also did a few group works. At 4:00 p.m. the lecture was finished and for the remaining day we had spare time which we planned on our own.

A lot of information..

Ministry of Economy

Our day started with a meeting with Dr. Igor Mitroczuk who gave us a very interesting speech about the polish transformation. But at first some facts about Dr. Mitroczuk. He studied at the Warsaw School of Economics after that he was working for the polish chamber of Commerce and as a consultant: first for CAP Gemini, later for Ernst & Young. Since 1998 he works at the Ministry of Economy, since 2006 he is also lecturing at the Kózminski Academy.

At the beginning of the lecture he gave us a test about Poland to see what we know about the country. He told us about Poland’s role as the heart of Europe, about its strengths, like the large domestic market, the central location and the young and well educated workforce.

The economic transformation started in 1989 when the new government transformed the system from the planned economy to a free market economy which was like a shock therapy for them. The transformation and the opening of the borders caused a loss of control of the currency, which caused prices to rise over 400%. Also the people had to organize their lives by themselves. They had to look for a job and a place for their kids while working. This and the fact that the other ex-communist countries didn’t change from one day to another made it pretty hard for the polish society.

After the shock Poland growth very fast. GDP started to rise about 7% every year. The private sector grew from 30% to 70% within 8 years. Now Poland has a strong economy, especially for boots and furniture. They have a strong entrepreneurship, the absolutely willingness to take risks and they are very individualistic.

ARD Studio

After the visit at the ministry we went to the ARD studio. There corresponds make reports of incidents in Poland for the German TV news.  This year they are in Poland for 50 years for Radio and 40 years for TV. The studio is run together from RBB and WDR who rotate all 5 years. Every week the staff of the studio sent a list with all the issues which are happening at the moment and they can tell about to the editorial office in Germany, where the editorial staff decides whether they want to send the report or not. If one of the issues is ordered the reporters in Poland start to make the report.

The staff of the studio gave us a very interesting guidance through the studio and we could see how cutting works and, as a highlight, how it works if there is a live connection. They showed us all the equipment and one of us even was allowed to sit on the correspondents place.

The team of the studio persists of one correspondent, three producers, two camera men and two secretaries. Because they aren’t able to film all by themself, they sometimes also buy contents from the polish TV.

German embassy

At the end of our day we went to the German embassy. There we met Matthias Rehm, the German economic consultant, who told us economic facts and economic and financial reforms in Poland. He said that Poland is rising. There’s a upturn in the country, they improve their infrastructure, reduce bureaucracy and taxes and they want to introduce the Euro. About the bilateral relationship between Poland and Germany he told us that both of them have the same goals. They want to strengthen the political and economic unity in Europe and have a stronger global ability to compete.

Another issue was the Polish German trade relations. For Poland Germany is the biggest trade partner, the other way round Poland for Germany is number 10. Most of the German exports are manufactures of engine building and this is also the other way round. German firms which invested in Poland are for example VW, Deutsche Bank, Siemens or BASF.

Not only the trade, but also the tourism between Germany and Poland is very important. More than 4.7 mio Germanss visit Poland every year and nearly 1.5 mio Polands spend their holidays in Germany, which is a very important factor of the bilateral economic relations.

At the end Mr Rehm told us about the business of the trade service of the embassy. Their main functions are the economic reporting to the government of Germany, have talks to the Polish government and the parliament, to assistant German visitors from parliament and government and to do Publicity work.