A few weeks ago, Oriol and I went on a German tour to meet with potential investors and strategic allies. The German market is an important one, and after the Red Herring conference, we received various calls from interested parties who wanted to know more about our product — after all, unlike most of our competitors, we plan to launch in the Continent before we launch in the UK. I think German, French, Spanish and Italian investors like the fact that we take their countries seriously and not as a second-stage destination. And so we’ve been having very preliminary conversations with various parties in various countries.

But I don’t think that I’d ever really experienced Germany before this trip. I had been well acquainted with the other countries. France is so close to Barcelona that the South of France is like a second home. And one of my best friends, Victor, is French, so through his network, I have a lot of acquaintances in Paris, etc. Italy was my favorite European destination before I found Spain, so I travelled there quite a bit from 1998 to 2000. For example, when I was waiting for my Spanish work visa, I had a few months to kill. So I took a two-week driving tour of Italy. In other words, I was very familiar with France, Spain and Italy. But even though I’d studied German during college, spurred by all of the Reunification excitement, I’d only been to Germany once — a weekend trip to Hamburg.

We visited various German cities during our trip, but I must say that my favorite was Berlin. The city has an excitement and an energy that reminds me of Barcelona — you can literally feel it transitioning. The first thing I noticed is that the people are incredibly polite and pay attention to detail. Our meeting in Berlin was scheduled for 10:30 AM on a Friday morning. At 10:00, we got a call to confirm that we were on our way and finding our way without problems. At the metro station near our hotel, we couldn’t quite figure out how the automatic ticket dispenser worked. So a nice German man came over an offered to help us. We couldn’t figure out if he worked for the transportation department - he was dressed in regular clothes - but when he saw that we obviously were confused, he generously offered to help us.

At the meeting itself, we were surprised that no one was dressed up is power suits. We had grey worn suits without ties, but our hosts came dressed even more casually in fashionable summer suits. They were completely relaxed and “human”. Sometimes people get freaked out when I say that someone seems “human” –it’s a big compliment for me — but the truth is that a lot of US professionals strike me as “not human”. I was surprised to see, during my first days at Yale Law School, that some students came to classes in power suits and called each other “Mr.” this and “Ms.” that. Even at a relatively early age, they wanted to show that they were “professionals” and/or intimidate their fellow students. And this was at Yale, the “relaxed” law school. At Harvard, students apparently rip out pages from library books so that other students can’t do the required reading!

Anyway, our German hosts greeted us with genuine smiles, joked with us about life in general and asked us about how we were enjoying Berlin. We talked about Berlin’s transitions, its problems and its opportunities. When no one could figure out how to get the projection system to work, there was no stress, no problems. We just kept chit-chatting until someone could figure it out. We did our presentation and they did theirs, but the tone was always like we were chatting with old chums. And when the meeting finished they invited us to call them if we needed anything at all during our weekend stay, and eventually we were invited by the younger associate to meet up for drinks on Saturday evening with his girlfriend and his childhood friends.

Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised. I definitely would like to partner with people like that — businesspeople who are “human”.

Apart from the people and the business opportunities, I loved Berlin as a city. I had the same feeling arriving there that I had when I first came to Barcelona — I felt a sense of inner peace and knew that some day I would live there. My friends who have lived in Berlin tell me that I should experience a winter there before I buy my tickets and call the moving company, but I am from New York and went to school in the North East. How much colder can it get? Plus, I love the mix of a controversial history, a public reimagining of the German identity, a beautiful city, cosmoplitan cultural and social options and a certain spirit that is difficult to define but that seems unique to Berlin’s residents. It’s like they laugh at life without laughing at you (well, sometimes they laugh directly at you, but it doesn’t seem mean).

I loved going to Checkpoint Charlie. I loved checking out remnants of the Wall and imagining what life must have been like during the Cold War era. Loved the boat tour and seeing people relax on the “beach”. Loved that going out was pretty cheap and the food was good. And loved analysing the public dialogues with the Jewish community in the form of various monuments and museums. I loved the city.

So it was with sadness that I left the city, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I’ve left. I keep thinking that Arnold summed it up in the Terminator movies: “I’ll be back!”.

Or perhaps more appropriately, as John F. Kennedy said famously (albeit erroneously): “Ich bin ein Berliner”!