BBQ with my colleagues

I am now for 5 weeks with RBA but in the first 4 weeks I only know a handful of my colleagues.

My first days I spent in Edinburgh, then I went with Vikki to Marlborough, afterwards I had a campaign in Oxford with Claire at Trinity College and then I run a campaign on my own in Oxford with Lincoln College. Since my first day I was only for a few hours in the office.

So it was a great opportunity that John made one of his legendary BBQ at his house and most of my colleagues joint this event. It was a fantastic funky BBQ where I got to know nearly everyone and I can say: It’s going to be a great time with these guys.

What happened in the meanwhile…

Time is running so fast for us at the moment. It’s been more than a week that I’m in Oxford now and there are lots of things to write:

After moving our things to Oxford as mentioned in the last post I drove back to Germany with Rafi to visit my grandfather on his 80th birthday. My Swiss uncle and I made a surprise visit and had a good time with parts of the family. As you can see having only little hair is a rampant thing in our family.

This is my uncle with his uncle and me during the birthday dinner.

Following the birthday party I’ve been in Essen for two days before visiting Rafi in Liederbach for a two day farewell trip. Sorry, now pictures…

Finally I attended Heike’s and Flo’s wedding on Saturday which was a really great party starting with the “civil marriage” in Mülheim and a big evening event in Essen. Since I didn’t manage to buy a new camera yet there is only one picture:

Me with Luisa, Mirja’s and Jörg’s cute daughter.

On Sunday I finally moved to the island with a fully stuffed car and a weird feeling in my stomach. But it was like coming home in a way. Klaudia has been kind enough to clean up our flat and make it a real home!

Since then I’m having a great time. Although there are loads of things to do (open bank account, register for all the student stuff, buy books, get student id, meet new classmates, buy sub fusc, get preliminary reading done and so on) it’s really exciting.

It feels like the city is bursting from all the energy in the forefront of the new academic year. That is really cool!

Have a look at the impressions of the last days here...

Home Sweet Home

On Friday 7^th we moved to our “new home” in Oxford.

Since we knew how complex our move in Essen was we were a little bit afraid: Would all of our boxes fit in the van and into the new flat?

Yes it did. With the cooperation of our friend Rafi and the time-frame that the van had to be back on sunday, the move was done inside two day. The van was packed on Thursday, Sebastian and Rafi picked me up in Marlborough on Friday at 6.00 am, we went to Oxford

and then the motto was “Cleaning and unpacking”.

All was done by 9 pm so that we had the first Thai-Dinner in our flat and afterwards we fall asleep very fast.

Thanks to Rafi

It is great to “Come Home now”.

Last days in Germany and first week working in UK

Since I have been on the national juniors’ camp held by the Marketing Club Essen and organized by myself in a leading role, there wasn’t much time to think about the upcoming changes. The camp was a great success with a fantastic team working together very well, great weather, a beautiful location and a lot of fun.

I left the event earlier than it ended on Saturday to have enough time for preparing my luggage, arranging the last things and finally visiting my family again. Saying good bye to them was quite hard since we are very close. But on the other hand I’m really curious to what’s coming up during the next days and weeks.

The farewell on Monday was bittersweet for the same reason. On my way to Dortmund airport we stopped by at the cemetery where my grandfather as well as my grand grandmother lies for a quick good bye.

From Dortmund I flew to Edinburgh where I participated in the CASE Europe, a big fare related to fundraising. I was there as a delegate of Rux Burton Associates my new employer and met a handful of my new colleagues who are very nice and gave me a warm welcome. I’m very pleased that I was given the great opportunity of attending the fare. It was a fantastic start into a new topic leaving me with a lot of new things learned and exciting things seen. The four days passed by very quickly and were exhausting since being flooded with new impressions in a foreign language seems not to be the easiest thing :-)

One big challenge had to be taken during the CASE. I was asked to tell the audience a little bit about the German fundraising market. Speaking in front of a group is not a problem for me, normally but having to explain issues I’m not completely in to yet and in a language which is not my mother tongue made me a little bit nervous. In the end it turned out to be quite good I think, so that I’m a little more relaxed on what might comes...

Our journey from Edinburgh back to the south of Britain was hell. It took us 12 hours to get to Swindon where we stopped for a night to go the remaining 20 km on the next morning.

In Swindon I met Sebastian who came over for the weekend not only to sing our rental agreement in Oxford on Monday but to celebrate my 30th birthday with me. It was probably the strangest and calmest birthday I’ve ever celebrated with only one guest (but probably the most welcome) and no thinking of the event beforehand. I had my first day on a campaign in Marlborough on my birthday with a lot of interesting insights on how people at Rux Burton do their job. Finishing around five p.m Sebastian and I had plenty of time to take a walk through the tiny streets of Marlborough ending up at an Indian restaurant for an early dinner. After a delicious meal we took another walk before we headed for the hotel the Marlborough College was kind enough to book for us.

Summing up my first week in Britain I can say that I’m experiencing a great start in a new period. People are very friendly and it seems as if I could really like the issue of fundraising. On the other hand with six different places of accommodation within one week (will move to college accommodation tomorrow...) living out of a suitcase is getting on my nerves. I’m therefore looking forward to moving into our flat in Oxford next week’s Friday to set up something like home in the UK.

My last days with NRW.BANK

What a strange moment: Leaving the place where you have worked for the last three years...

It’s been five months now since I formally quit my job as an Investment Manager with NRW.BANK’s participations department. A long time to prepare the leave one might think but in the end it all went quite fast... Up to the last afternoon I haven’t had the feeling of really leaving the company and my colleagues. Don’t know where that came from...

A possible explanation might be that I spent the last two days of my NRW.BANK time on a strategy meeting with the whole team on Schloss Krickenbeck an old water castle owned by WestLB and set up as a high standard Seminar hotel.

These strategy meetings are held by the participations department once a year and I was very happy being invited to this year’s event. As usual the two days weren’t too serious but well balanced between discussing new market opportunities or improvements in existing products and on the other hand team building and heavy socializing.

In the afternoon of our first day we had a painting class in which we designed collages of the letters forming our company’s name NRW.BANK. We did this in groups of three formed by coincidence by picking notes and had a really good time with great results.

The evenings at Krickenbeck are traditionally spent in the bar "Tenne" and are vital part of the socializing side of such events. We had a very funny evening with good talks and a very nice speak of my boss saying that I did a good job during my time with the bank and that I will be welcomed warmly when I will come back. In addition to the plane shaped kite with flight vouchers I got during the breakfast I arranged as a farewell meal some days ago, I got a little book with pictures and nice words and wishes from my colleagues now. This is a really nice thing to remind me of the last three years and the nice persons I have been working with. Thank you very much for it!

Another tradition linked to the bar is turning to Ramazotti at a certain moment during the evening and finally ending up drinking Bessen Genever. The evenings usually finish with bamby eyes bagging for a last and final round of drinks and staff only reacting to this reluctantly.

In the morning after too many drinks having a swim in the hotel's pool is always a great idea and good basis for the rest of the strategy meeting. I did so with my very close work mates Mirja and Marko taking the opportunity to wrap up things and to discuss the last evening.

The two days ended with a warm farewell from my colleagues and me heading to airport Weeze catching the plane to visit Klaudia in Marlborough.

Cleaning up the mess

We normally try to get the big mess cleaned up directly after a party.



Our farewell party was an exception since we weren’t able to do so which left us with quite a bit of work on Sunday morning. With the dismantling of our sold kitchen scheduled for 3 p.m. we didn’t have that much time for getting things in order. Since Klaudia had been up early and started tidying up immediately we finished everything on time and even had the leisure to have a coffee with Steffi and Horny who stopped by on their Sunday walk with their daughter Maja.

On Sunday evening we moved to my parent`s flat. Staying in our one would have been quite uncomfortable without a kitchen :-)

Our farewell party

After a week of hard work with packing boxes and getting administrative things done we gave our farewell party on our sixth wedding anniversary. Thanks to the help of my mother, mother in law, sister in law (who made a really fantastic cake),



Aunt Anna and Joey’s Pizza, we didn’t have to prepare more than the drinks and therefore could spend the day quite relaxed.
With having no furniture in the living room except the dining table we set up bar tables in order to make the party more comfortable for our 30 guests.



It was a great pleasure for us to have so many good friends around especially since even those with small children or having been invited to other parties managed to come for at least a short while.



Supported by a good amount of Zitronella and other spirits we had a great party which only ended in the early morning hours.
Many thanks to our guests for a really nice night, all the good wishes and the nice presents!



Please find some of the party pictures here.