May 2010Monthly Archives

Cafes in Mannheim

Some days on vacation you want to throw away the travel books, forget about the castles and museums, and soak up the atmosphere of a place by spending a morning in one of its cafes. If you wake up in Mannheim, in one of its many hotels , you won’t have far to go to find a number of interesting establishments in the City Center. Here’s a handful of places you might like to check out.

Broker’s Inn, located at P7, 19, Planken, offers its guests coffee, tea, and light meals. There’s a nice ambiance to the place with good service. At F1, 5, Mannheim, there’s the Cafe am Markt, a cafe that’s near museums and sight-seeing destinations. The menu consists of light snacks and meals. The Cafe Journal is particularly good for a mid-day breakfast, with service that’s friendly and a good atmosphere. If you’ve awakened with a sweet tooth, you might check out the more upscale Cafe Wagele, a place to meet friends in Mannheim for those who are fans of chocolate-cream, coffee and cake. If you have a craving for pralines and cakes, you can find that here by the slice or whole. Herdegen has been a cafe since 1838, and serves its customers terrific light snacks and desserts, as well as coffees and teas. The dining room is in a classical style, and the place offers a breakfast menu.

If you have plans for sight-seeing churches later in the day, try Ketch Up, at B6, 12 Mannheim, which isn’t known for its interior, but serves good breakfasts and is near a beautiful church. There’s also Meier’s, a restaurant known for casual dining, tapas or light meals, as well as coffee. There are full breakfasts served all day long and salads and sushi plates.

These are just a few of the cafes Mannheim has to offer its guests, with many more to discover in this city on the Rhine, which has origins dating back nearly a thousand years. Once you’ve had your coffee and breakfast, you should be ready to tackle such sights as the Wasserturm, considered by some to be the most attractive water tower in the world , and the Residenzschloss , the largest baroque palace in the country, now used as the home of the University of Mannheim.

Lisa

May 30, 2010

Travel

0 comments

residenzschloss

Presentation and the Art of Improvisation

Anyone who’s been in the work force for the past five years has very likely had to do a presentation of some kind. Even the most creative and the most mundane jobs have some components where presentation is a skill that’s necessary for communicating something important or essential. Of course, some jobs are more prone to needing solid presentation skills training than others. Chances are good that the more the job involves working with other people, the more these skills will come in handy.

For many people, the art of presentation isn’t so much an art as it is an exercise in anxiety. Public speaking is still the number one fear , and it’s a necessary part of working in the world. There are plenty of tricks that can be learned in training programs, but it’s important to understand that the anxiety isn’t something that people overcome necessarily. The really successful speakers and performers never lose their anxiety, but learn how to turn it into energy that can be harnessed and made useful.

Interestingly, perhaps one of the most misunderstood qualities of a good presentation is organization. The presenter must be prepared, have a thorough knowledge of what they’re talking about, and also have a solid delivery, with visual aids to help things move along. The key here is really in the visual aids, because they add something very potent. They give the listeners a break, so that they can focus on an image rather than concentrate on deciphering and reading language. Perhaps even more important, the presentation suddenly becomes entertaining.

This is the point where a good presentation can become great, and it’s based not on organization, but on the speaker’s ability to improvise . To take in the present and respond with grace is a skill that anyone can learn. It’s immediately rewarding, because it has the power to make something mundane fun. Being able to respond to a moment is also one of the key elements to customer service training , and in time, the skills begin to overlap, and finally to feed each other. They also have many applications in everyday life.

Lisa

May 27, 2010

Business

0 comments

improvise

Best Breweries in Copenhagen

In Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, there are 6 breweries to visit, but only 3 of those are the best ones to tour and enjoy a home brewed beer right on the spot. Plus,these three breweries are conveniently located to major Copenhagen hotels , so you don’t need to worry about driving back through unfamiliar traffic after having tasted several of the fine brews.

First on the list of Copenhagen breweries is BrewPub , which is a bar and restaurant that’s only a few minutes from City Hall Square in Vestergade. The bar is surrounded by a charming courtyard that makes for an oasis in the city. There are 14 draught beers on tap and 4 of those are reserved for Gunnhild Kolveried, and the rest are from the brew master’s own creations like Atlantic IPA, VesterWeisse and William Wallace 80 Shilling Ale. Visitors can also taste brews from Danish micro-breweries and not on an empty stomach either. The Danes are not only serving great brews, but chef Carsten Hughson created a great menu to fit any of the beers on tap. Restaurant hours are Monday through Saturday from noon to 10pm. The Pub is open Monday through Thursday from noon to midnight and Friday and Saturday from noon to 2am.

The Faergerkroen Bryghus, is a legendary inn in Tivoli, where in 2005 they added their own micro-brewery in the second building. In the first building, is the restaurant, where you can order an open-faced sandwich (smorrebrod) and many other delicious Danish dishes along with Faergerkroen’s famous house beer. The brew master, Georg Lassacher, who comes from Germany, makes a Blonde Lager that is superb and out shines the original Marzen and the Vienna Marzen. Faergerkroen is located in Tivoli, Vesterbrogade 3, and is open Sunday through Thursday from noon to midnight and Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 1am.

Hopefully, you will try the two breweries suggested above, but you most definitely need to check out the Amager Bryghus . It’s been over 50 years since the Danes have had a drop of Amager beer, but back in 2007, this brewery has once again opened its doors thanks to Morten Valentin Lundbak and Jacob Storm, who together worked with home brewed beer and won several medals and Danish championships. Tours are available in the evenings on Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays the tours are open during the day and last two hours. The two hour tour will cost 150 DKK each (around $26 US), but the amount of the best brewed beers in Copenhagen you’ll get to taste is well worth the cost. Amager Bryghus is located at Fuglebaekvej 2C, kaelderen.

Street Parade in Zurich

The history of Zurich is as long and complex as any of the streets one might cross and get caught up in while enjoying the incredible event that happens here every summer. The streets are mysterious and inviting, as enticing as any chapter or channel in the history of the region, where the multiple cultures pile up over time, reflecting and refracting each other in multiple directions.

In some senses, the Street Parade is full of metaphors that are impossible to split open with the tools found in a box that is as heavy as common sense. In another sense, there is only this present right here, and the present only lasts for nine hours. It’s enough time to find one’s way into a party, and to find one’s way into a moment that keeps evoking a past that needs more water because it’s hot. It’s also summer, and even here, everyone needs to keep hydrating, which is how people sometimes refer to drinking water. The terms don’t matter after a certain point.

Although the choices of fine hotels are more complex to manage in August, they are not as complex as the streets, which mirror and mock history, and become something altogether more certain when the music is loud. House and techno are here, and they all speak to a sentiment that this is truly it. It has to be, because in Zurich, the party people understand that this is what we all wait for.

Love Parades might come and go, ebb and flow with the changing times, where changing sponsorships suggest an end to an era that began before the wall fell in the other city. There are new walls here, and new eras, and for this moment, Zurich starts to rise again, its own wall to contend with in the history of all things. This is the street party that people wait for, and every year, there is a new sense that these complex beats do move on and over each other, like bodies that dance in the sun, watching the summer disappear and invoking another season where art is made in the hands and the eyes of another stranger.

The Art of Inspiration

There are many different roles a manager can play on any given day. Some of these can be very unpleasant, especially when it’s dealing with difficult situations and hurt egos, but these can also be the most challenging. But management has changed over the years, and there are many techniques for working with people that can be amazingly effective in all types of situations. The generation before this one seems to have been guided by a more isolated philosophy, but the trend now is more toward doing things as a team, and working for common goals.

The Dale Carnegie teachings apply to management just as they do to all aspects of life, and one of the most challenging traits to acquire is to be inspiring . This is also one of the most rewarding traits to accumulate, because it tends to help the person dong the inspirational talk and action just as much as it does the target audience. Getting people to feel positive about what they do is one of those rare tricks of manipulation that does not feel like manipulation at all. That’s probably because it’s such an effective, and contagious sense, and no one complains when they’re doing something that they love.

Based on the ideas found in the influential book on winning friends , techniques for inspiring your team are based on very elementary principles of attraction. Instead of trying to force others into a kind of behavior or thinking, it’s much easier, and more rewarding, to model these behaviors. The same notion is at work with inspiration. Inspiration comes from the notion of drawing breath , and letting the breath become a force that keeps spirits high, and moves the energy forward. On a very metaphorical level, this means that a very subtle change in attitude can make a world of difference. It transfers to the team, and they in turn transfer this sense to the clients, and that’s something that everyone can feel inspired about.