A big thank you to everybody who supported our regulars’ table. Since our first beer garden get-together in July, our group has grown quite considerably.
We are now working on an events/activities schedule for 2010 and appreciate any suggestions/ideas.
The very first event for your diary will be our Rosenmontag Party (Carnival Monday) on 15 February. The Hilton in Gateshead has offered again the venue and is organising food & drink. There will be an optional carnival theme for Faschingsfans, which you will find out about more in the new year.
If you want to help a local initiative: Durham is currently bidding for City of Culture status in 2013. Winning the nomination could help bring a lot more visitors to the region – see www.durhamcityofculture.co.uk for details.
In the news was recently that DB (Deutsche Bahn) Regio will take over the running of the Tyne & Wear metro. For further details click here. Any comments/thoughts?
Great news from FlyBe! From March they offer direct flights to Hannover. The service will run three times a week. Click here for further information. This is in addition to the only other direct German connection to Duesseldorf, which is provided by Lufthansa.
You might know that around 100m people in Europe speak German as their main language. There are also many other regions around the world that continue to speak the language. Over the past 200 years, Brazil for example has seen many German immigrants and in Santa Catarina (Blumenau and Pomerode) around 60,000 people still speak German. In December president Lula visited Germany to strengthen economic relations. Some interesting facts: around 1,200 German companies are active in Brazil, generating ca 10% of the industrial GDP. ThyssenKrupp is the country’s major inward investor for decades, building a €4.5 billion steel works, Volkswagen has also revealed that they will invest around €2 billion over the next four years and companies like Siemens are keen to win contracts for the new high speed train linking Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (estimated cost €13.3 billion). The Football World Cup 2014, Rio Olympics 2016 plus findings of major new oil fields have brought Brazil firmly into focus. For further details see the Handelsblatt.
While talking about exports – one famous cultural export that came from Germany is of course the Christmas Tree. After the German Prince Albert married Queen Victoria, he introduced this tradition in the 1840s.. The picture of the Royal Family next to a decorated Christmas tree made it popular not only in Britain, but also later in the US.
On that note I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a great start to a prosperous 2010 – Frohe Weihnachten und einen guten Rutsch!
Stammtisch 
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