Interview with Sarah Krueger

Togliatti is cross nation place where you can find more than 100 nationalities. Besides that our city has a lot of expatriates and city-guests. As you know in our region we have plenty of international enterprises and plants that's why our city is a frequent place to visit for business people from around the world. And today we are glad to meet Sarah Krueger who arrived in Togliatti for work reason. She is Vice President HR EMEA, NORMA Group Holding GmbH. We met and had a word with her (thank you again for your time, Sarah!).

Before starting our interview I would like to give some information about NORMA Group Holding GmbH.

NORMA Group is a global market and technology leader in Engineered Joining Technology solutions, with more than 60 years of manufacturing and product-development experience. Employing about 6,000 employees, it has a global network of manufacturing facilities and numerous sales and distribution sites across Europe, the Americas and Asia-Pacific.

The Group manufactures a very comprehensive range of innovative joining-technology products in the clamp, connect and fluid categories and occupies a leading position as a solution provider. Its dedication to quality and its technological leadership has won NORMA Group the confidence of over 10,000 customers in more than 100 countries. (www.normagroup.com)

Ltd. "NORMA GROUP CIS" is an organization that is engaged in manufacturing of automotive components in Togliatti and resale NORMA Group products in the CIS. This company belongs to the international holding NORMA Group.

Sarah, is it your first visit to Togliatti or do you come regularly? How many times did you come to the Togliatti?

I probably came to Togliatti around 10 times because we set up a business year back in 2010, we founded our first production.  And it was a period of time when we had several ups and downs in our business, especially with some typical HR.  That’s why I came almost every 2 month during half of year, so, yes, I came many times. 

We understand that you arrive in Togliatti on business issues, but may be have you visited some tourist places?

Oh, unfortunately not yet, and I would like ask you about touristic place in Togliatti, because only one nicest place which I saw it is a large orthodox church with golden domes which look so great and fantastic in morning sunshine. And that's all what I saw. I know only the new part of Togliatti, but it was dark and I didn’t see a lot. Please, give me recommendation where to go.

Yeah, of course! In general, Togliatti is an industrial city, but we have majestic nature in our region and we have some places within the city limits where you can evaluate it yourself. For example you can go to the Monument to Vasily Tatischev or to Volga waterfront of Komsomolskyl district. And also you can find more information about some cute places and current events on expat63.ru  (http://expat63.ru/place/12-the_monument_to_vasily_tatischev/, http://expat63.ru/article/22-komsomolskiy_district_walk/)

Thank you!

And last question which I want to ask to you as a foreigner. Can you compare the cities of Russia and Germany? What differences do your see?

What I know in Togliatti it is a new town and this is absolutely different to Germany. The main difference is all German cities, no matter industrial or not, just looks narrow and squeezed because we don’t have space, Europe is tiny, we are small countries. Russia is a huge country, this rather reminds me of USA.  And take any roads in new town of Togliatti it is wide, there’s so much space and you have 5 lane goings this way, 5 lane goings the another way. Next weird is so many high houses, 10-12 floors, nowhere in Germany, except Frankfurt, you can’t find it. Our houses have like 4 floors, mostly 2 or 3, sometimes 5. And only in Frankfurt because it is a finance metropolis of Germany we have couple high-rise, like in USA, the banking building. Yeah, our countries are really different.

Sarah, thank you for your answers! We hope our city is friendly for you and you can find time for visiting some touristic places!