Villa Ratingen, Ratingen near Dusseldorf; 16 May 11

I don’t visit Germany very often these days so I enjoyed a quick trip over last week to visit InterPack, the big triennial packaging show in Dusseldorf. Hotels at the times of big shows double their prices and then double them again but I left it till the last-minute and got a really good deal at the Villa Ratingen, just 10 minutes from the airport.

I’ve been visiting Germany since 1979 when I started work with Dow Chemical based in Switzerland. I had a succession of European jobs with Dow and it was impossible to do any of them without visiting Germany frequently and the first three that I had gave me a view of the country from 3 different, albeit chemical viewpoints.

Job number 1 was ‘distribution planning and development manager’ which required me to visit all Dow’s manufacturing sites one of which is at Stade, west of Hamburg. Although I would generally stay overnight in or close to Stade I would occasionally stay in Hamburg and have done so many times since. It’s a classy city with an international outlook which comes with it being a trading city. It’s got some fine hotels, I stayed once at the Atlantic where the doors to the bedrooms are wide enough to accommodate a sea captain’s trunk, and good restaurants; Hamburg may be the best place to eat Dover sole.

My next job was as a purchasing manager and if you’re in purchasing in the chemicals industry that means visiting the Rühr Gebeit and I spent lots of time visiting the big 3 German chemical companies and several others as well. I spent a lot of time in Dusseldorf which in those days was the Japanese capital of Europe so it was a great place to get Japanese food.

The 3rd job was as a product marketing manager for a range of specialty chemicals including Methocel cellulose ethers. It was one of the best times of my life as I worked with an excellent team to turn around a failing business and then for it to be hailed as one of the company’s star performers. Methocel itself is sold in a range of applications from paint to foodstuffs but its biggest market is in building materials where it’s a key component in spray plaster and tile adhesive. And because Germany is Europe’s biggest market for such products I spent lots of time there again, this time visiting customers and developing an appropriate vocabulary .

Living in Switzerland it was a challenge to learn ‘real’ German but I did my best and by the end of the 80s I reckoned I could communicate pretty fluently about the building industry on the one hand and hip ailments on the other, having developed a severe case of osteoarthritis which necessitated a hip replacement shortly afterwards.

After my Dow days I’ve generally had reasons to go to Germany but being more UK focussed now the opportunities are not so frequent so I was pleased to have the excuse last week and I was pleased to see that, substantially, nothing has changed.

The Villa Ratingen is a good middle class German hotel: efficient check-in tolerant of my imperfect German, registration already completed from my on-line reservation (why don’t they do that in the UK?), a big, light comfortable room and a fully tiled bathroom with a Grohe shower.

The restaurant is Italian and the service was prompt and efficient (of course). I enjoyed a mixed anti-pasta from the buffet, veal with mushrooms and ham (only eat veal in German-speaking countries and by the same token don’t eat red meat there) and strawberries with cream. Nothing to complain about but more quantity than quality. The Germans think they do Italian food well but they do it in a uniquely German way. To drink I had an excellent Pils (once more, of course) but the wine was a disappointment with only Sicilian wines available by the glass. The grappa afterwards made amends although I could have done without the free of charge top-up. It seemed a good idea at the time but next day …