BEST: Week 3

Monday, 27 June 2011

After returning from the station yesterday evening, we all slept in until 8:30.  Breakfast and the ride to class were uneventful; we were even dropped off in the right place for the first time since the new Kanu-Club staffer began driving us.

Today´s classes consisted of further sections of International Marketing with Dr. Klein and European Economic Integration with Sven Horak.  In Dr. Klein´s class we reexamined the case study from last week concerning Fillkar AG, the company considering going international with its line of uninterruptible power supplies to stem its financial woes.  Using figures given in the text, we ran simple calculations to determine that FillkarAG´s target goals were actually quite unrealistic given the strength of competition, but numerous other options such as partnerships existed which could increase revenue.  In Sven Horak´s class we held another quiz with each team earning 4 (imaginary) Euros towards our final total.

In the afternoon, Blayze and I again rode bikes to the REWE grocery store up the street past the Rheintorchenstraße tram station.  During our first visit we´d looked around, during our second we´d learned exactly where to return the shopping baskets, and today we learned the procedure for purchasing grocery bags at the register.  (They are not offered and the clerks make no effort to assist anyone even with large purchases)  Now we don´t need to carry backpacks and feel like we´re stealing our food when we leave!

For dinner I made a turkey and pepperoni sandwich with olives and cheese, a bowl of tomato soup with a dollop of cream, and two German bread dumplings.  The dumplings came from the store pre-formed in plastic wrap; I just soaked and boiled them and removed the packaging.   Over dinner we watched a movie on Ryan´s laptop.  Tomorrow we´ll try to watch Eurotrip which we bought at the store today after failing to find a copy to watch before our Amsterdam run.

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

Today’s classes included our first section of European Currency Union and Financial Markets with Professor Roland Döhrn and another section of European Economic Integration with Sven Horak.  Prof. Döhrn apologized for missing last week´s lesson; he was at a conference in Bratislava.  At this, Blayze and I just glanced at each other and tried not to laugh at the Eurotrip reference:  “No one will ever find me in Bratislava!”  The class is very similar to International Economics course taught by Dr. John Rezek at MSU with an emphasis on the Eurozone of course (and the *Impossible Trinity*).  We will cover the history of the European Currency Union and the effects of the current fiscal crisis on the weaker Euro countries like Greece, Spain, and Portugal.

Sven Horak's class (Sven is 4th from left).

In the evening we returned to the Kanu-Club and watched the film Roadtrip which came in a Doppelpack with the copy of Eurotrip that we bought at the Saturn electronics store yesterday. 

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

Today we sat for back-to-back sections of Banking and Corporate Finance in Europe with Professor Schierenbeck, a well-known Swiss professor who has apparently written a banking and finance book which is the standard textbook in many European universities.  He also has a really good tan.  Seriously.  Even Prof. Cassel commented as he walked into the classroom, “Prof. Schierenbeck, tan as ever, I see!”

Prof. Schierenbeck obviously knew his material and launched right in.  He first gave a brief overview of the German banking system.  However, when he attempted to have us work through a data spreadsheet to perform some simple calculations such as Return-on-Assets (ROA), we soon realized that many of the German financial terms used different translations into English than the terms we all used at home.  Perhaps something was lost in translation, but the issue made the rest of the afternoon fairly difficult to comprehend.  Next week we´ll have another two sections with Prof. Schierenbeck´s student and business partner.  We´re wondering if he has a tan too.