Day 14 - Goodbye friends, goodbye Mechelen

Sadness was in the air. All the fun, all the experiences... done. That's it. The last party was over and we woke up late in the morning. Even before we got up some groups have already left the city. We enjoyed our last breakfast and also began to gather outside to go to the railroad station. After saying goodbye to the friends who did not leave yet we started our way back home. But we learned by frustration that walking to the railroad station is very uncomfortable so we ordered two taxis to bring us to the station. Like all the other days we were to early, far too early! So we had almost one hour for chatting and taking the last pictures. We left Mechelen around 11.30. The trip back to Germany felt somehow longer. The most students were looking forward to get home but some were sad, too. We arrived in Ulm at the evening. At the end it was unspectacular. We said goodbye to each other and everyone disappeared to get home.
The experiences we gained are fantastic and unique. Everybody learned some much about communication, group working and of course technologies. But for me the most important thing is that we had the opportunity to get to know a lot of very different people from completely different countries. I loved to find out the little details which revealed our different origins.
But also the german group learned much about itself. Today we are more open to each other and have a better team spirit.

The whole project was a wow-event. If you have the possibility to participate on such an event: DO IT!

Thanks to Marc who took care of us! =)
Thanks to our professors C.K. and R.v.S. who made this possible!
And thanks to Hans who arranged this project and impressed me a lot!

Day 13 - The final party

Then it was the last day. Some have looked forward to this day, some felt a bit sad that this was our last day in Mechelen and some of us were afraid (Mitch, Alexa, Wolfgang, Roman anyone?), because this poor dogs had to hold their final presentation again in front of all the participants and some guys from RESOC.

But at first we all met one last time in the Mechelen Hogeschool in the morning so that the presentators could prepare their presentations for their last performance. Then we went to the big Auditorium, where "punishment" took place. But our buddies from germany performed very well within their groups. Of course ;-)

After that we had our last -as every day we guess- fine lunch and then we met in the Mechelen Hogeschool for one last time. There we evaluatet the whole IP-Project and listened to some concluding words from our "Master of the Universe" Hans.

As this was done, we had some leisure time until the BBQ in the evening. Some used this time for sleeping, the girls went shopping in Mechelen city and the the others started drinking beer in the Hostel to get prepared for the evening.

A few helpful people (including some of us Ulmers) went to the BBQ-Location at about 6.30 pm to help the organisators to prepare the BBQ.The BBQ itself was really great, the food was amazing, the taste as well as the amount of food of course. And, oh yeah, the beer was for free, too!
Hans spoke once again some final words to us and received from larry and some dutch people presents from all participants, what obviosly touched him more than he wanted to admit.

After this BBQ, most of us went to our second home, "De Planeet", to let the last party begin. Even our Profs followed us to celebrate this Project with all the great experiences we made.Somehow, one meter of beer after another hit our table (finally, it felt like at least half an kilometer) and the party got really....incredible!

After a lot of beer, dancing and "partying", the night ended at about 5.00 am, when most of us fluctuated across the street in their beds.

Enough said.

Mitch & Andi

Day 12 - the great elections

This day started again with a heavy workload. We had to complete a task about Key Performance Indicators from the day before. And we were still working on a technical task: We tried to build a scorecard with important KPIs using the new BI-functions in Excel 2007 connected with our database.

And, finally, we also prepared our final presentation about the hole two weeks. After lunch the final presentations were held before a audience containing our professors and selected members from other groups. There were always two presentations simultaneously, what saved us a lot of time. After this the professors selected four premium-presentations – these fortunate groups were supposed to hold their presentations again the next day in front of all students and the stakeholders. This led to some kind of class society: The ones who were able to enjoy the evening and the others who brushed up on their presentations in the evening (there were even some very eager groups who tried to improve their slides).

At about 7 o´clock we expected our professors to join us again in Mechelen. We (the Germans) met them at the groote Mark were we started with Hans our stroll through the alleys of Mechelen – in hope to find a restaurant big (and cheap) enough for us. We finally succeeded and entered a very nice Irish pub which offered really delicious dishes. So we ate for example a very tasty Irish burger and drunk of course some Belgian beer.

After the dinner we decided to show Mrs. Prof. Kocian our favorite, legendary pup – de Planeet! We´re sorry, but on this part we can´t give you an insight, because we both decided to go to bed early in order to perform well in the morning (yes, our two teams were ones of the best!).

Alexa und Roman

Day 11: A busy day

This Wednesday morning was surprisingly normal. The cantus evening before didn’t claim as many victims as expected. Almost everybody was up and (partly) awake. Did we finally get reasonable?

The work at the “Katholieke Hogeschool” started as always at 9am…well actually 9:15am with a lecture on Scorecarding/KPI by Rien Hamers a lecture from the Netherlands. Even though the presentation itself was actually pretty interesting you could now see which group(s)/person had the longest stamina the day before (heads down on the table).
After this lecture we had 2 hours to define some Key Performance Indicators for our projects and getting an idea on how to implement them in our system.

In the early afternoon a guy from Microsoft hold a presentation for about one hour. He gave us a overview on their products for BI and how they work in Best Practice (SQL Server, Office etc.).
From 3 o´clock in the evening our groups were back at work. One of the busiest afternoon of this project began. We had to a) complete our Data Mart / Cube b) implement the KPIs c) create some calculated fields in a strange program language and d) start to develop the final presentation for tomorrow. So the most groups had to stay in the “Hogeschool” for much longer than usual.

As a result of it the evening was mostly used to take a rest in the Youth Hostel. Some of the students play their favorite card game “UNO” (it was actually the only one available) others studied and some tried to relax with some drinking games.

Day 10 - Cantus

the report is still missing... (Alex, where are you?)

Day 9 - presentations and pool evening

On Sunday we all recharged our batteries for the last week of IP MISS LOGO. So Monday we all began motivated by presenting our immediate results of the first week. Every group showed current status of its work in a 30 minutes presentation. Thereby every group member had to talk one part in front of two other groups and some lecturers. The best two groups were the lucky ones to present their great work to the hole IP MISS LOGO participants in the afternoon.

Afterwards all students could enjoy a lecture on Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) by Ilse. She gave us exemples of business intelligence technologies like COGNOS (data warehouse and data mining) which are necessary for our next steps in building a balanced scorecard (BSC). Especially for business students this presentation provided an insight into information technology.
In order to practice our theoretical knowledge about OLAP we got an introduction of how to build a cube by Hans. To fullfill the task we first had to install a virtual machine, which made the most work on this afternoon.
To finish the working part of the day the german group decided to practice their song (Auf de schwäb’sche Eisenbahn) for “Cantus” – an evening programm which is planned for Tuesday. Even after a hard working day of 8 hours our voices were in good order.
On this evening the intercultural exchange of skills went on by a pool tourney. To figure out the best pool player we build teams of two persons. On 10 tables the IP participants could prove their skills in playing pool.
The match was a very interesting experience for all of us, because almost every countrie has its own rules to play pool. Therefor we first had to define general rules. After some small discussions we still could enjoy few very uncomplicated and nice games and get even more in contact with other cultures.
Unfortunately it was not possible to finish the pool contest and figure out one winner. Some participants were “very” tired and the nice evening was cut off short. So on this day we arrived earlier as the days before to the hostel, especially because we found out that the taxis in Mechelen are really cheap. This information will definetely help us on our last day when we will have to carry our baggage to the railway station.


Ramona & Vera

Day 8 - finally a day of

On Sunday we had finally some spare time. Maybe the tight schedule during the first week was the reason why we were really looking forward to this Sunday.

We started this precious day with a visit at the washing saloon – of course after the sleep of a good and long night. Apparently some guys underestimated the need for clean clothes. Actually I think the nights at the pubs were responsible for the extensive need of clothes (note: in Belgium smoking is still allowed). But in the end we succeeded in this task and went home with a full and nice smelling case of clothes.

After we went back to the hostel it stopped raining and we decided to visit Antwerp – which was a really rewarding decision.

Antwerp has a very picturesque city center and a lot of very interesting spots like the cathedral, the Grote Markt with the 16th-cetury Guildhouses and the city hall – even the railway station was really extraordinary: a mixture of very old components and new architecture. We also were roaming through the wide, diverse and amazing pedestrian zone in order to get to the sights. Unfortunately most of the shops were closed, what made the shopping for the girls not possible – lucky for the guys. So in the whole day they just gathered some postcards (what took just 30 minutes).

Also a big advantage was the fact, that all the sights are located in a central and relatively small area what made exploring per pedes very comfortable and enjoyable. Thus we also managed to take a look at the shelde and the harbor. Which is playing a important role regarding the diamonds, trade and other industry.

After a visit to the Belgian pendant of McDonalds – called QUICK quality burger restaurant – we were getting on our way home. When we arrived at the hostel we were all very tired although it was our first free day. So we decided to have a very calm and relaxing evening in order to have a fresh start in the new work-filled week.

Alexa und Roman

Day 7 Brussels

Like the hole week we started the day with a breakfast in our youth hostel. After the breakfast the groups met in the computer room and have time till 12 o clock to finish the presentations for Monday.

Brussels we´re coming!!!

At 1pm we met all together at the train station to go to Brussels. After 20 minutes train ride we arrived in Brussels.

Now, we build two groups. One group go to the city and visit the shops. The other group ... a slight-seeing tour. The slight-seeing tour allow us to see all the interessting buildings and to take photos of them. We also visit the atomium and want to go on the top with the elevator, but the queue was to long.

By Yildiz

Day 6 - BI Congress

Like every morning also this one started at 7 o'clock in order to get ready for the long and hard day. After the first five days we are already used to the very inconvenient shower. So we take a shower by pushing the water-button with one hand and washing the hair with the other one.

Followed by the great breakfast in a familiar atmosphere the work of the day began with the walk to the Katholieke Hogeschool along with the other members of the German team. We found out that the stereotype of being on time really fits to the Germans. So the day also starts by waiting for the other nationalities.

On the sixth day we finished the task on ETL and started the preparation for the presentation which we will have to do on Monday. Our daily teamwork was broken off by the lunchtime. In contrast to the hole week most of us were disappointed by the meal we got this time. We realized that fish is not our favorite dish - also the dessert, some kind of rice pudding, didn’t taste very familiar. But we managed this as well and went to the Business Intelligence (BI) Congress which was organized for the regional students and companies. But we were also invited to take part.

It was an opportunity for us to receive information about companies like SOLIDPartners or Accenture and to get in contact with them. Additionally to the presentation of two alumni who spoke about their experience of working in companies on BI topics, we received another lecture on BI from the Dutch lecturer. The best presentation however was the practical BI case presented by SOLIDPartners. They talked about their cooperation partner SIAT which is an agro-industrial company focused on the production of palm oil, rubber and cattle with production plants in Ghana, Gabon, Nigeria and Ivory Coast. But probably the best thing on this event was the networking cocktail after the official part. There we had the opportunity to talk to the representatives of the companies and drink some wine for free.

To finish our day we went to our favorite pub “De Planeet” and enjoyed in intercultural atmosphere some Belgium beers, which have a really good taste. Vera und Ramona

Day 5 – A good day for Germany a bad one for the Netherlands

The first morning without having party the day before everybody appeared punctually rested to the breakfast. It was as “diversified” as the days before.

As the stereotype Germans we all were on time in class in contrast to our friends who are living in more southern regions of Europe than us.

Our day goes on with a lecture about ETL (Extract Transform Load) from our Belgium organizer Hans. The first part of the lecture was more theoretical, so far some of us had some more time to give one’s eyes a rest (special greetings to our Finnish friends :D).

After the theory the practical part follows as usual. So we’ve learned to handle with MS SQL Server 2005 and MS Visual Studio. We have started up filling the tables we created the day before. This process drains in this way, Hans put before on his own computer and we reproduce what he was doing (a lot of us did it without knowing what they were really doing, it was just clicking) à in Belgium this is called LBD (“learning by doing”, Marc Schaffer, Mechelen, 2008)

After so “much” work we really deserved the lunch. But the EU doesn’t spend enough money for our food, so we had to do some extra work after the meal in form of a kind of “slavery work”; we had to fold plastic bags for the BI congress taking place the next day.

Now our task was to transfer the theoretical knowledge into real work. We have to fill in unemployment data get from RESOC in the tables created from the star scheme model we constructed the day before.

First the dimensions age groups and city were filled easily with copy and paste, that’s “Belgium ETL”. The real usage of ETL then was creating the fact table with the measures of male, female and total amount of persons. As consequence of the good preparations we have all done our work in time.

After spending a couple of time relaxing we were paying attention for the most important highlight of the evening: Soccer (but only for guys).

At 8 o’clock we went to the bar just across the street to watch the game FC Getafe vs. FC Bayern Munich. Our friends from Netherlands were just a few meters away in another bar watching the game PSV Eindhvoven vs. Fiorentina.

After an extreme exciting game (Andi get nearly a heart attack) we won the game in the extra time and were able to blame our dutch “friends”, that were losing their game.

Having an exciting day and a “really good” soccer game and we went satisfied to bed unlike the students from Netherland.

By Alex and Ramazan

Day 4 - Learning by Frustration

This was the first morning without having a party the night before since we have arrived to Belgium. Therefore we managed to appear on time at the breakfast. Like every day we went to the lectures at 9 o'clock. This time our supervisor Marc Schaffer was presenting the next topic about "Data Warehouse". There we learned one of the most important abbreviations that we got used to at this project. LBD - "Learning by Doing". The next important abbreviation was introduced later by our master of the universe Hans Tubbax (inspired by Marc). LBF - "Learning by Frustration". This one was tough stuff but it pushed us to learn a lot. We practiced our new knowledge by using the tool called DBDesigner. After designing a star schema we implemented it into the database. This was the last task for day 4.
The next point on the agenda was the pubcrawl organised by Belgian students. We only managed to visit 4 pubs. still the party was pretty awesome. Day 4 ended late again.

Details about the project

Why does the EU spend so much money on a big group of 60 persons? Before our arrival we only got less information about our task here in Belgium. We were told to develop a Business Scorecard for the city of Mechelen. A Business Scorecard is some kind of method to control the state of a company and to measure the effects of specific strategies. Therefore we learned much about developing a Business Scorecard three weeks before the project began. And we also got to know the technical view of this topic. I think we were one of the best prepared teams. But now we realized that we were "over-prepared".
Lets start at the beginning. After the arrival we were introduced to the program and the stakeholder which is a governmental organisation with the name RESOC. They wanted to have a tool for analizing data to make decisions afterwards and to measure the success of their work. On the second day we had the opportunity to interview two persons from RESOC. In Summary we had 30 minutes for asking them about their work, their wishes and what exactly they wanted us to deliver. In respect to our results we slowly realized that the main goal of this project really was to get together a big group consisting of many people from many different European countries.
Part of the program are several lectures about the topics related to Data Warehouse which gave us the knowledge to generate the desired tool. In the first week we learned to use two programs for extracting, transforming and loading data into a database. We deepened this knowledge on Thursday and Friday. At the beginning of the next week every team is going to present its results to all the other participants.

Day 3 - Recover from the first two days

After the intercultural -drinking- training on monday, we started day 3 after breakfast in the auditorium of the
Mechelen Highschool with a presentation about RESOC. RESOC means regional economic social commitees and is a non-profit local organisation, that controls and tries to solve the problems (like unemployment for example) in the region around Mechelen.

After this introduction we had the chance to interview two stakeholders from RESOC to find out, what the organisation actually does and what kinds of problems they have in particular. Though we had just 12 minutes for each interview, we couldn't receive as much information as we wished for. The problem was, that we did not exactly know what we should do and the stakeholders didn't know exactly what they expect from us as well. Especially they did not have any clue about the possibilities of what you can achieve with analysis and BI.

Although, in the end we could receive some information we discussed within our groups and then we were working on the solutions of their problems. By the way, the typical german thing was, that we interpreted the problems much more complex than they really were ;-)

After the working part, most of us were really tired from the last evenings, so some of us just watched football on tv, others played UNO or went early to bed. So we can't write any more about this day because we just had to recover from the last two nights and tried to get fit for the following days...

Mitch & Andi

Day 2 - The meaning of being intercultural

Day 2 started with a big breakfast at 8:15. After that Hans Tubbax (one of the belgish organizers) picked us up at 9:00 and lead us to the building which is our workplace for the next two weeks. We were introduced to the school, a participating company and the project. The school gave us guest student card so we were able to use the computers and Toledo, some kind of groupware. We also were seperated in several teams. Every Team consists of one student from each school. At the end there were 10 multi-national teams with 6 members. An online personality test gave us the opportunity to find out what kind of person each one is. It was meant to help us forming the team. The next stop was lunch at 13:00. Soup, hot meal with meat and a dessert. What else do we need? It also tasted good of course. The program continued at 14:00 with another speech from Hans. The official part ended with a lecture given by our Prof. von Schwerin. The topic was Business Intelligence. Finally we made it through the first day. Some of us celebrated too much the evening before. And some of them even had less then 2 hours of sleep. So the next stop was the bed in the youth hostel. But this joy lasted only for one and a half hours. At 18:30 we met to prepare our german apperitif. There was a program in the evening for this day. Every team had to bring some typical food and drink from its country. Our german food was Leberkäs (some kind of german sausage), salami sausage, cheese and bread ("schwäbische Seele" and dark bread). And our german drink was Jägermeister, 3 bottles of it. The interesting fact was that every country brought a plenty of whine, beer and hard liquor. This was going to be a tough evening. Every Team had to present its food and drinks. After this little speeches the party started. As you can imagine the mood changed in a very short time. Almost everybody drank. There are 7 different schools. You had to drink at least 7 shots to taste all of them. Of course the most of us had to taste more than one drink. It was an amazing scene. Almost 60 students and professors... well, i think this is called intercultural. When all bottles were empty we had to change the location. We went to "de Planeet", a pub next to the youth hostel. After our arrival we made a club out of this pub. The lights were dimmed and the music turned louder. The party went on. The last people left around 5:00. Germany represented more then half of these people.
It was a fantastic day... how are we going to survive this INTENSIVE program?

Day 1 - Trip to Mechelen

Mission “Mechelen”
On 6th April 2008 we met at the train station in Ulm. At this moment our secret journey started. We enjoyed our trip playing UNO and chess. When the train arrived in Cologne we had to change the train. While we were waiting for the next train to Brussels we spent our money at McDonalds. After 40 minutes our train arrived and we got in the train and played UNO till we arrived in Brussels-Nord. The train station was very old and small, but it was not the main train station of Brussels.At the station we saw some people with large baggage and we thought that these young people were our colleagues from Portugal. With the Portuguese we got in the train to Mechelen. The train was full with foreign people and they spoke different languages. Yippee!!!! At last we arrived in Mechelen. Impossible, they forgot to roll out the red carpet. Hmmm… OK… but where was our chauffeur? He did not come. So we had to walk to the Youth Hostel with all our baggage. Ohhh… what was this… a car…for us?...wow…unbelievable…Damn! The car only took the bread and one bag.After 15 minutes we saw our Youth Hostel and we was soooooooo happy to arrive.About the Youth HostelFirst we got an introduction and the keys for our rooms. The rooms were small, but we were happy that the bathroom and the toilet were in the rooms. There were also 2 bath-bowls and mirrors (hey girls, they made it for us!!!)At the evening We were all very hungry, because of that we got into the city to find some food. We walked and walked and walked…..there was no end --> banana problem!!!At least we asked a guy about a place where we could eat much for less money. Finally we found a little sweet pizzeria. We all were so lucky, but as we got the pizzas we were frustrated. Price-performance ratio à disappointment.Poor Roman! He wanted to eat a pizza with salad. Hihihihi...The waiter brought him the pizza and salad, but the salad was on the pizza.After the fun trip through the city half of us went to bed and the rest visited a pub.

By Tatiana and Yildiz

Englisch 1, Deutsch 0

Auf Bitte von Herr von Schwerin switchen we to English.

HOSTEL MECHELEN

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http://www.hihostels.com/dba/hostels-Mechelen-008009.en.htm

u.a. gibts da auch ein paar Bewertungen von anderen User. Nicht viel, aber vielleicht interessiert es ja jemanden.

Reisedetails

ULM HBF - MECHELEN AGGLO(Hin- und Rückfahrt)

Hinfahrt:
Ulm Hbf-Köln Hbf, 06.04.08, (ICE 610), Abfahrt Ulm Hbf: 10:51 Uhr, Gleis 1, Ankunft Köln Hbf: 14:05 Uhr, Gleis 5Köln Hbf-Bruxelles-Nord, 06.04.08, (ICE 14), Abfahrt Köln Hbf: 14:44 Uhr, Gleis 5 D-F, Ankunft Bruxelles-Nord: 16:53 UhrBruxelles-Nord-Mechelen, 06.04.08, (IR 3267), Abfahrt Bruxelles-Nord: 17:14 Uhr, Ankunft Mechelen: 17:37 Uhr
Dauer: 06:46, nicht täglich, Verkehrstage zu unregelmäßig.

Bemerkung:
(ICE 610) Bordbistro
(ICE 14) Bordbistro

Rückfahrt:
Mechelen-Bruxelles-Nord, 19.04.08, (IR 3281), Abfahrt Mechelen: 11:23 Uhr, Ankunft Bruxelles-Nord: 11:46 UhrBruxelles-Nord-Köln Hbf, 19.04.08, (ICE 15), Abfahrt Bruxelles-Nord: 12:07 Uhr, Ankunft Köln Hbf: 14:15 Uhr, Gleis 4Köln Hbf-Mannheim Hbf, 19.04.08, (ICE 509), Abfahrt Köln Hbf: 14:54 Uhr, Gleis 6, Ankunft Mannheim Hbf: 16:24 Uhr, Gleis 4Mannheim Hbf-Ulm Hbf, 19.04.08, (ICE 109), Abfahrt Mannheim Hbf: 16:31 Uhr, Gleis 5, Ankunft Ulm Hbf: 18:06 Uhr, Gleis 2Dauer: 06:43, nicht täglich, Verkehrstage zu unregelmäßig.

Bemerkung:
(ICE 15) Bordbistro
(ICE 109) vsl. starke Nachfrage, bitte reservieren
(ICE 109) Bordrestaurant

Linksammlung

Internetseite zum Projekt:
http://bicc.khm.be/

Unser Hostel:
http://www.mechelen-hostel.com/