One story, in particular, was worth the price of admission. The President of the German part of the company had a long career at high levels of the German government before moving to private industry. He was involved in national security at the time that Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech in Berlin in which he exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall." The general reaction inside the German government was (1) dismay that the U.S. President was employing a provocative and confrontational tone with the Soviet Union, and (2) disbelief that such a thing would ever happen. Well, to his surprise, his office is now just east of the Brandenburg Gate in the former Russian sector. On his first day at the office, he called his wife from his cell phone and told her "Guess what? I'm actually walking to work through the Brandenburg Gate!"
It was wonderful to see the tremendous impact this had on him. It was also wonderful to see expressive emotion from a German executive. Truly, life is full of surprises.
