Global traveller
Magdalena Böck sells high-end technology on four continents
At first she didn’t want to stay longer than six months. Meanwhile she’s been “in this great city” for six years. From Austria to Berlin: “I’m your classic economic refugee,” says Magdalena Böck. Did she flee from privation? It seems more like curiosity and an eagerness to experiment was responsible for the wanderlust of the now 28-year-old. Her choice of study is already quite revealing. She studied “Export-Oriented Management” for three years at the University of Applied Sciences in Krems an der Donau as well as reading courses in Spanish and Arabic. Surely a great starting point for a young woman who says she has “a knack for languages” - she learned English, French, and Italian at school in her hometown Feldkirchen – and a penchant for internationality. She also says of herself: “I am bit of a chameleon. I always take on the accent of the people I’m talking to.” This is probably why her German shows no trace of her home country.
She was unsuccessful in finding an Austrian employer who could use such talents. Then she found one on the Spree River – the “Gesellschaft für Förderung angewandter Informatik”, GFal for short, has been developing high-end technology since 1991 and has been based in Volmerstraße in Adlershof since 2011. However, Magdalena Böck is, to put it carefully, not typically encountered there.
In any case it is revealing that she lauds her current city in the following way: “Out of all the cities on this earth I have visited, Berlin has the best public transport system.” And she has visited many cities. Melbourne, Querétaro, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore. She’s travelled to Mexico, India, Brazil, China, and the United States. As head of “International Sales & Market Development”, she is in charge of selling GFal’s products on four continents. These include wondrous objects such as the “acoustic camera” which is able to produce images of a source of sound. She is also in charge of briefing and instructing her customers and, as a “virtual executive”, she manages sales branches around the globe. Still, even when travelling the world, a work day lasts from 9 to 5. She often has business meetings with customers in the evening and a string of e-mails to reply to at any given time of the day. But then she enjoys being able to have the occasional lunch on the beach instead of the canteen in Adlershof. Work-free weekends also offer opportunities to explore the region: “I wouldn’t travel this far just to be working all the time.”
She spends her free time at home as low-key as possible either with friends or with books. However, she also goes running and rides her racing bike. She says she doesn’t do it, “because I particularly enjoy it.” But she believes her body requires some welcome change now and again. She also doesn’t deny that she is ambitious. She does deny, however, that she has a fixed plan for her career. She was in Australia when we talked to her and had just returned from Sydney – also a great place where she could imagine living. “It will happen someday.”
By Winfried Dolderer for Adlershof Journal