When Harry met Barry...

in walldorf! Actually it was more like Bill met Prakalp. And given that Walldorf is truly a village, it was more like in Heidelberg!

The story started years ago. There once was a company called Syclo and they did some funky stuff, but mostly they built software based on SAP's ABAP stack for Mobile devices. So like all good big companies, SAP bought Syclo... and they lived happily ever after. Well almost.

That was 2012 or so. After 10 years or so of floating around, Bill and Prakalp (and Jitendra), finally got on a Project together. Which promptly went to hell (more or less, mostly less). and just like that, the foundation was laid.

Minds met, but we never did.

Finally, it so happened that the folks happened to get invited to the center of the universe for a customer (?) workshop. That opportunity could not be missed now could it?

Come Sunday morning (which Bill was wasting his time in Downtown Frankfurt). Now, given that Bill is from AMERICA, the land of plenty, it may have been a shock that *everything* was closed. When he finally got around to reaching out to me it was time for lunch! You saw the river Nekar, flowing through the town in the photo above, and since it is a lovely area, I thought it would be a nice welcome to take Bill to a riverside lunch! Alas! despite the restaurant being called "Riverside Cafe", it was actually in the middle of a traffic junction!

We drank BEER!! (in the middle of the day! Bill was scandalized)

Come the week, some work may have been done.

But what did happen is that Mr. Jobson joined the gang! If you dont know Chris Jobson, then you haven't really lived life. What a guy! So obviously we had to go have dinner.

The highlight of the evening was neither the company nor the dessert, but rather an impromptu walk through a field to try and get to their hotel (yes, Walldorf is a village!), where we stopped in the middle to look at the stars. Can you imagine three grown men, in the middle of a field, in the dark, looking up at the sky!

Weirdos!

Sadly, Mr. Jobson left earlier with some excuses about family commitments (rush home to family rather than go drinking with folks from work, really?), but Heidelberg wasn't safe from the rest of us. And by now, Jitendra, that scion of Product Management joined us in painting the town red (or Orange as is the case below)!

Given that Bill had had his fill of veggies (remember we are in the middle of a field here), we had to find a place that served real dinner and of course we picked Kulturbrauerei. Not one of the oldest, they are just 20 years old or so, but my goodness, do they make up for it with their ambiance and menu! Suffice to say, we had a blast!

Dont forget the Master Brewers Red Secret!

All in all, a lovely few days with good friends!

Ps, Given that we were day drinking on Sunday, we may have caused a small accident!