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STUTTGART, Germany--"Hey, Billy G.! Did anyone tell you we want you to go to Germany next week?"
That's how my boss casually dropped on me plans to cover the annual news conference and earnings announcement for Daimler-Chrysler at the corporation's German headquarters.
Normally, we wouldn't send a reporter over there to cover a routine, spoon-fed release of corporate financial statements. But these are not normal times for the company's American-based Chrysler Group.
Three years after the biggest industrial merger in history, Chrysler is hemorrhaging red ink, losing billions of dollars. The German management is undertaking a massive restructuring, eliminating 26,000 jobs and closing several plants.
That's big news in Detroit, and I land the assignment of reporting on the company's new strategy to get Chrysler back on track. This also means I'm off across the Atlantic again on assignment for the fifth time in just over a decade.
I love Europe, the people, the languages, the scenery, the food--and most of all, the lifestyle. Many of us with families still in countries like Ireland, Italy, France and Germany should know, while they might not have all the material wealth and comfort we enjoy, they--in many ways--know how to live better than we do.
I also enjoy the challenge of getting the story in Rome, Moscow, Berlin or London, and with even more difficulty, getting the story out. This trip would be a task, but certainly fun.
I had done several reports on former Chrysler boss Bob Eaton, and I'd been dogging him to answer some questions about the deal he called "a merger of equals." When Eaton helped engineer the sale of Chrysler to Germany's fabled Daimler-Benz, he walked off with a cool $70 million. Now, workers and executives at troubled Chrysler are saying Eaton got the gold and they got the shaft.
German television already was noticing my reports on Chrysler's fate and wanted to meet with me when I arrived. I took an overnight flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, and then made a connection to Stuttgart. The Saturday I arrived, the city in southern Germany had a fresh coating of light snow, and on the cab ride to the hotel the place looked inviting.
I'd been here before in 1999, when I was on a German-American journalist exchange program. I spent three weeks studying German and European politics and economics. My wife, Elizabeth, came with me and spent most of her time in quaint German villages with friends as I hop-scotched around the county.
I speak some German, and that helps, but most people here speak English very well. That's a German advantage in many ways, and the United States is missing a great opportunity in not teaching our children foreign languages at tender ages.
German trains are efficient as well as crowded. I took one and headed north to meet up with the Detroit News bureau chief based in Wiesbaden.
He was called out of town, so I got together earlier than expected with friends of ours from Michigan.
Rob and Linda Slotnick and their three children are on their second tour of duty in Germany. Rob's an auditor for the U.S. Defense Department.
Linda picked me up at the train station and, as we drove to her home in a small village along the Rhine river, I noticed again how smart the Germans are with their water resources and the lessons we can learn.
The Rhine is wide and impressive, but still cannot rival the Niagara in beauty. The castles and vineyards are delightful, but what makes the river stand out is the easy access. Nearly everywhere people can get to the river's banks to walk, ride bicycles and just hang out. The river provides the pivotal center for social life and gathering.
Let's hope the Niagara some day will stop being a center for industrial and commercial blight and become a place where residents and visitors will flock.
The Rhinegau is serious wine country, and on my last visit here I learned the delight of the regional Rieslings. Up until then, German wine to me was that awful, sweet, perfumy stuff select importers foist upon Americans.
The good stuff is dry, crisp and fresh tasting. In the summer, you can sample it at strategically placed Weingartens along the river and in small towns. The good Rieslings are catching on in North America.
Rob and Linda do something that is rare for Americans stationed there.
They actually send their children to German schools and, as a result, the kids are growing up perfectly bilingual and appreciating a different culture.
Rob's job requires considerable travel, so Linda's the queen of German aculturization. She's lovely, charming and has a smile that could melt an iceberg, but her real ability is working and insisting that her children live and learn the German way.
That's not always easy and requires a great deal of sacrifice. The Germans have more rules than any other democracy, and sorting through that drill is trying for Americans.
But having seen them again after nearly two years, I can see how Kate Lynn, 10, Kristen, 9, and Kevin, 5, are developing into sharp, worldly young people.
Their experience will enrich them and they'll be far better off than most American children who attend military-run schools and whose mother's closest encounter with German culture is following the signs to the P-X.
The next day, I hooked up with my crew in Stuttgart. Carsten Nollert and Andreas Schild were as pleasant as they were professional. We shot two stories without a hitch an got on the autobahn to drive back to Frankfurt.
It's hard to imagine being on a superhighway for two hours and not encountering a pothole. But it is that way on the autobahn. No, folks, it's not the weather. It snows in Germany, too, but they have the radical notion that roads will be used for a while and they ought to be built to last. We edited our pieces and got ready for a tricky satellite feed. The material had to bounce from Frankfurt to Bonn to London, and then up into space and on to Montreal and finally to Detroit. Everyone has to pay attention and, thank God, it worked.
I then got on a fast train back to Stuttgart. That's the way to travel--space, comfort and a cold Pilsner as you sit and relax after a long day's work.
Back in Stuttgart, I went to a Daimler-Chrysler media reception and met Stefan Tiyavorabun, a German reporter who was doing a profile of the American television reporter covering the event. I also talked to several corporate types about the setup for the next day.
The Europeans are more structured and formal in their business presentations than we are, and the arrangements for the news conference at the big Mercedes plant outside Stuttgart reflected that.
They give you huge volumes of printed materials and then you wait for the company chairman and top officers to deliver their carefully prepared remarks. I sorted through things and wrote reports as the German TV crew taped my every move. It was unnerving being on the other end of such scrutiny.
I did phone reports for our morning newscast every half hour, and we wrapped things up with a live video report. Again, more satellite complications, but it worked, and people were happy back in Detroit.
That evening, I had dinner with Pia Vorwerk, who lived with us in high school when she was an exchange student. She's a delightful person and really like another daughter to me. Pia now works for Volkswagen and is assigned to a German automobile institute for studies and work.
Pia shatters the stereotype of the serious, stern German. She has a marvelous sense of humor and always has my number. It was a joy to see her again.
Well, before I return across the big pond, I have another stop in Istanbul, Turkey. My daughter Amy is working and studying there. She can even speak Turkish and knows the places the tourists never see.
In the next issue of the Reporter, I'll take you on a tour of one of the most exotic cities on earth.