menufaktur

Point blank period, the Frankfurt office is the bizomb!

Aside from having arguably the most beautiful office across the entire company--equipped with 2 espresso machines and a balcony overlooking the Main River--the office is big on teamwork and team building. As if the Monday morning status meetings (where they go down a list of all the outstanding appraisals and where they are in terms of being completed), the Friday afternoon "knowledge sessions" (where someone in valuation takes the lead to present a topic relevant to the market) or the office shower (where employees can shower after being involved in strenuous activity before or during work) weren't enough; I get word Monday that there was going to be a wine tasting of sorts after work on Tuesday. Turns out, it was a full on 4-course meal with numerous glasses of wine (white and red) that WE were going to play the major role in preparing.

Look...its almost 1am as I start to write this and I have the SERIOUS itis. I'm going to save this as a draft and come back tomorrow and write enough (with pictures) to account for today's (Tuesday's) and tomorrow's (Wednesday's) blog. But right now, I have to get to schlafen ("sleeping" in German).

[Next day, approx. 9:15pm] All right, a bunch of us from work left together to take the U-bahn (U line subway train) to the Huenstrasse station. Oddly enough, this is the exact stop I live at on Berger Strasse, so when everyone else was clueless as to which way to head, I--the guest in their town--was telling everyone where to go. Thanks to my GPS-enabled brain, all I had to do was type the address of "menufaktur" (the place of the event) into Google Earth, look at the map for about 30 seconds, and I knew exactly where to go. The only trouble we had was locating the address (on the street, that is) because, unlike all the other storefronts, the number wasn't visible from the street. In fact, the darn place wasn't visible from the street. We ended up having to walk through this passageway and into what looked like the ground-floor recreation room of an apartment building. However, once inside we were greeted with...

Well...we were also greeted with champagne...and later white wine...and later red wine...and then again white wine. And please, make no mistake, we're talking around two or three glasses of each over the course of about 5 hours. So please, viewers at home, just take for granted that the vino was flowing in the background of this entire episode. Mind you, nothing crazy happened, it just served to amplify what was already a dazzlingly social (and informative) evening.

Once the majority of us had arrived (there were about 25 to 30 of us in total), the chef began to explain (in German) the proper technique for how we were to cut the chickens (shown on the middle of the table in the above picture). First the leg and thighs, then the wings, then the breasts (along the breast-plate seam). As for the rest of the chicken, we were to take the kitchen shears (the horror-flick style scissors that you have in your kitchen that you've probably used to cut a paper or two in your lifetime) and cut up the bones and gizzards to use for a broth. Then he went over to the zucchinis and showed us how he wanted them to be cut for a chutney of sorts we were also going to be making...

He then said something in German and pointed to the dessert area of the table. Shortly thereafter, everyone got to moving to whichever section they fancied. At the time I was conversing with Verena (one of the 10 or so August-to-February interns at the office). Since she said she'd translate what the chef was saying into English and we were right by the chickens, we got to cutting the chickens. By my 3rd chicken, the rest of the chickens were done and Verena had moved on to...

Now, here's the 64 million euro question...What fruit/vegetable is this? If you said, "pumpkin," then you would be in agreeance with Verena, the guy next to us, the chef and just about everyone in there...except for me. Now look, I've seen that fruit/vegetable wrapped up at Safeway during these Fall months and it is not pumpkin. Now, I don't know what its called, but its not pumpkin...and that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Moving along, after peeling this mystery fruit/vegetable and chopping it up into cubes about the size of the tuna on the skewers that Martin (the head of valuation in Frankfurt) was assembling next to us...

I reloaded (i.e. filled up my glass). However, when I turned around to rejoin the action, there must have been about 8 to 10 additional cooking tasks that had started behind my back. It was at this time I figured it was time to socialize. In doing so, I found myself...

• making ravioli FROM SCRATCH. We were taking FRESH dough, cutting circles out of it, placing a small amount of filling in the center (one of us had made the filling, mind you, at some point while I was cutting mystery fruit/vegetable), dabbing the edges with a wet brush and sealing a ravioli pocket with the filling on the inside...

• making gnocci FROM SCRATCH. We were taking some of the mashed potato (that one of us had made at some point while I was cutting mystery fruit/vegetable), rolling it into a tiny ball in our hand, putting it on the back of a fork, depressing a little crevice in the middle and rolling it off the edge of the fork to create the gnocci-shape...

The guy sticking his tongue out is Pascal. He sits right across from me at the office. We'll get to him later...if not in another blog. Also, sorry the actual gnocci is only in a small part of the picture, but...that's how "nice" of night it was.

• and, of course...finger-fighting for cake/pastry batter...
  

It's nice to know that half-way across the globe, some things remain the same.

I also played vouyer (all while "trinken"--German for "drinking") to several other tasks going on around the kitchen.


The top picture contained the ingredients were were going to use in our dessert (the 4th course). As for the bottom picture, the flat pan with the creamish color was used to "bathe" the tuna skewers before pan-searing them. The smaller pots (with the greenish contents) were used to stew the chickens.

I also took some time to eat, without a doubt, the BEST olives I've ever tasted in my life. You know how most olives have that tart saltines to them. Well these were completely devoid of that. They actually tasted like...olive oil. I was eating these by the 4's after he broke them out. FYI...we ended up adding these to the chicken just prior to plating that course (I believe it was the 3rd course).

Well, it was around the time our appetites had been teased to the point of seriousness...seriously...that we sat down to eat. Our first course were the tuna skewers with guacamole and that zucchini/cous-cous chutney. The second course was the ravioli. The third course was the chicken (with olives), pan-fried (but not breaded) chicken breasts and gnocci. The final course (dessert) was this...

(fat-free ice cream (not shown) with fluff pastry and orange ragout)

I know I have a tendency to, seemingly, be anti-climactic (i.e. going though all this trouble explaining what we were doing and then having only a small paragraph explaining the actual finished dishes and only one actual picture of the dishes), but, as with the Cut & Paste entry, the real beauty of this was in the process. Not only did I get to talk, informally, with almost everyone in the office that, until this day, I had only greeted on the first day during my whirlwind tour through the office, but I also got to show everyone my "casual" self. Moreover, I also found out about some things, like...

• how when the weather's cold enough during the winter, they just, on a whim, plan a weekend ski trip to the Alps;
• how a couple people have had their BEST skiing on New Year's dawn--if you get up early and catch the first lift onto the slopes, they are fresh and empty because everyone is drunk from the night before;
• how the white wine we were drinking was from a German vinter and was the 2005 or 2006 gold medal winner from a world-renowned competition in France (needless to say, I ordered 6 bottles);
• Martin, the head of Frankfurt valuation, used to play international league basketball (he can dribble 4 basketballs at once). Now, when he's not killing the game in valuation, he enjoys windsurfing...and soon he is going to some islands, near to the Canary Islands, where the waves reach up to like...a lot of 'meters' high
• one of the interns is a jazz saxophonist
• and so on...(I won't bore you any longer).

I said all this to say...and I'mma close the blog on this...that all of this serves to bring the valuation team closer. Now, the effectiveness of such an event in America is questionable because...we don't work in teams. Sure, we help each other with comps and if we've done a property in the area, we'll guide them in the right direction (sending over our report, passing along contact info of people that might be helpful, etc.), but that's about it; because we're only paid to the extent of the reports WE'VE actually written (i.e. we only get a bonus if our production has exceeded the amount we've been paid). Unlike America, in Germany, everyone's production is pooled together. And the extent to which the OFFICE has exceeded its expenses (rent on the office, salaries, overhead, etc.) is the amount to which all of the valuers are paid as a bonus.

You be the judge of which you think is better. I'm of the personal opinion that when you have people who have worked in the business for a number of years and have developed an expertise in a given property type or area (replete with local contacts and comps), the "DC" set-up is more favorable. However, when you have an office as young as the Frankfurt office, the "German" set-up works better because everyone's on the same level and works together to make everyone better (and inevitably more money). Of course another benefit is that such a set up fosters these "team building" events. Although its impossible to quantify their 'fiscal' effectiveness (in a cost-benefit sort of fashion), its hard to believe that after such a fun and social event, productivity isn't positively affected.


Cheers.