By Ron Littlefield

Thursday was a day of planes, trains and automobiles (actually buses) with an early morning flight from Berlin to Dusseldorf. We had our first special gathering of a couple of dozen suppliers, contractors and service providers interested in our VW project. The session in a downtown Dusseldorf hotel was an extended five-hour lunch with presentations by state and VW officials and ample time for meeting, greeting and question answering in one on one conversations with members of our delegation. Those attending ranged from giants of European industry to small component manufacturers and even one or two with established ties in our region - an auto carpet manufacturer, for example, with ties to Dalton. In the afternoon, we dragged our luggage onto a fast train and made it to Frankfurt by early evening. I had a great conversation over lunch with Tennessee's German rep on tourism. He knows our CVB staff and is working on tourism connections for Chattanooga related to our continuing renaissance.

Today (Friday) our second "Invest in Tennessee" session. This is a great process for building regional cooperation with our near neighbors from surrounding counties who are traveling with us. Chattanooga media has gone home and we are now on our own.

- Mayor Ron Littlefield