So my host dad is retired but he used to work at this place called Agro Bördegrün (he is still part owner). It is an agricultural company in a nearby dorf. Over Christmas break, he offered to give me and my friend a little tour. The tour started with a little swag of course. We got a tote bag, a DVD about the place, a lighter, and a pen. When you visit a company in Germany, I feel like swag is kind of typical. For instance, when I went with my host sister's school to the Deutsche Bahn headquarters in Berlin we got the coolest pens with a flashlight built right into the pen. I think I have already mentioned this pen in a past post though and I should not get so excited about a pen...but it has a flashlight built right into it! Anyway, I digress. after we got our free swag we got to hear the boss talk about the company a little bit. I tried to follow along but it was none too easy. From what I could understand, the company makes a lot of different products from plants/crops that it grows in its own fields. They even provide Colgate in Germany with one of it's ingredients for toothpaste...see what I mean when I say they make a lot of different products? They also do business with a bio oil company. The boss of this place is something to behold. He is literally like 7 feet tall with the biggest hands and feet I have EVER seen on a human being. I have no idea how he finds clothes that are long enough for him. He is really living up to the towering German stereotype. After we stopped gawking at his stature, me and my friend were given a little tour by my host dad. You can tell my host dad visits often. He knew everyone's name and my host brother currently works there. It has become a family affair. I learned that the company is pretty environmentally friendly. One of the first things we saw was a screen that displays the energy produced by the solar panels on the roof of a nearby building. It reads "Daily Energy 3.12 kWh".
Me and my friend were also treated to something very special. There just happened to be a Trabant on the company's grounds that day. A Trabant is a car but it is not just any car. It was a car that was produced for the people during the times of east Germany. It has extremely small tires and is itself very small. The best part is that these cars do not rust because the bodies are not made out of metal. The car body is made out of a fiberglass, plastic like mixture. The traditional materials used to make a car were probably too expensive for a DDR car company to acquire and use. Not sure how safe these cars were but it sure was interesting to see. It was complete with a DDR (east Germany) sticker and a German flag in the back window. Okay, I gotta explain some things here. DDR stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik. To us lay people, that means the soviet influenced east Germany that is no more. Also, the displaying of a German flag can be taken as a sign of DDR support. Many Germans do not display the flag on their houses or cars. The use of the flag is slowly becoming more frequent. A number of reasons contribute to this. One of them was how far Germany got in the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Germany's team did so well and people couldn't help but be proud of their team and show it with their flag.
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