Learning, Hot and Spicy: A Monday Morning with Ralf

Two dots on the map. Northern Germany. Northeastern France. Rain tapping on two windows, steam rising from two mugs. It’s Monday morning, and the Mayor—our host in Cleebourg—opens the week the Pineapple way: with a warm, slightly mischievous conversation about learning something new. On the other end is Ralf, a barbecue romantic with eleven grills, nine peppers, and a knack for turning mishaps into stories you’ll retell at dinner. This is not a classroom. It’s a kitchen table, a dashboard, a trade-fair aisle. It’s where learning shows up unannounced and stays for the meal.

The Pleasure of “One More Grill”

“Ten barbecues are not enough,” Ralf laughs, telling us about the Dutch tabletop grill he and his wife found at a mobile-home expo. It’s compact, travel-ready, and powered by a small gas canister—less fuss, more flame. And because detail matters to a man who cooks by feel and memory, he explains why its 30 mbar regulator can mean the difference between a roaring sear and a frosty gas bottle that chokes the flame. Learning, here, is tactile: twist, ignite, listen to the hiss, watch for that whisper of blue.

Takeaway: The fastest way to learn is to touch the thing you want to understand. Pick it up. Turn it over. Light it—safely. Notice what changes.

From there, the conversation widens—still smoky, still joyful—into the big purchase they didn’t make: a motorhome. Ralf has opinions (of course he does). The layout matters more than the logo. Frankia’s designers, he notes, trick small spaces into feeling large—split wet rooms, more sight lines, fewer doors. “You can live in it,” he says, as if the more radical proposition is that you might also love in it: work, cook, look out at the Baltic, watch the rain. The way he describes it, you can feel the floor bounce slightly beneath bare feet when you shift your weight toward the stove, then the sink, then the bench where you eat hot food from hot plates you didn’t know your life needed.

Takeaway: If a space changes how you move, it will change how you learn. Choose your tools and rooms for the way they make you behave.

There’s also the engine talk—Fiat Ducato versus Mercedes Sprinter—torque for mountain roads, cabin tech with navigation and better audio, winterized tanks warmed by the heater so nothing freezes when the weather does. This isn’t gadget lust; it’s skill architecture. We often mistake learning for memorizing facts; Ralf is reminding us it’s also about choosing systems that make good outcomes inevitable.

Micro moment: Are you really going to wait until next summer to try that thing you already daydreamed about doing this one?

When Teaching Teaches You Back  

Ralf learns fastest when there’s “a part practical and a part theoretical.” At the expo, the Dutch demonstrator didn’t just say the grill cleans easily—he ran the steps: the plate to the dishwasher, the rest with mild soap and a cloth. Touch makes knowledge stick. Later, back in Germany, Ralf flips roles: he’s the one teaching distributors about his company’s products. He doesn’t teach spec sheets; he tells stories. The WD-40 beginnings, the eccentricities, the “why this helps you” thread that keeps people awake. The Mayor nudges: that’s not a sermon, it’s a dialogue—me to you to me. When they teach, they learn. When they learn, they sell. Not by pushing, but by narrating.

This is NLP in the most humane sense: anchoring memory in the senses. The thrum of a van engine, the clink of a grill plate, the faint citrusy nose of a Tasmanian pepper. When Ralf says he keeps nine peppers—“catron,” “citrus,” black, the whole chorus—what he’s telling us is that he’s built a mental palette he can reach for when he wants to change the mood. It’s not just flavour; it’s language.

Takeaway: If you want people to remember, give them a scene to remember it by.

The Beauty of Mistakes  

We all love a perfect recipe. But we become through the flawed ones. Ralf shares the beef roulade that should have included shrimp and lemongrass—only the shrimp stayed in the fridge, and the lemongrass went bitter because he crushed it out of habit. “Where are the shrimps?” his guests asked, chuckling. Another time, his Parmesan potatoes came out pale, perfumed by garlic but missing the burnished brown that sings “ready.” He laughs as he tells it, then confesses the real thrill: combining ingredients that seem wrong—until, suddenly, they’re not. That’s the alchemy. That’s Monday turning into something you tell friends about on Friday.

Takeaway: Make enough mistakes that a few of them turn into signatures.

There’s a broader lesson here about courage and iteration. Remember his rule of two: a little theory, a little practice. When it fails, he tries again. When it works, he claims it—not as a fixed recipe, but as a direction of travel. The Mayor hears it too and gives it language: the difference between presenting and selling, between a monologue and a conversation. Ralf doesn’t so much persuade as invite—and the invitation is always to taste.

Micro moment: What would you learn if you gave yourself permission to ruin three dinners this month?

Curiosity With Boundaries—and That’s Okay

Ralf insists he was born curious, but not about everything. Marathon chatter? He supports his wife with real love—and just as real honesty: hours of split times aren’t his thing. That admission is an underrated learning skill. Curiosity thrives on oxygen; you conserve it by declining the subjects that smother you. The Mayor mirrors the point: learning is lighter when it’s your choice. And when it isn’t—school, say—it can be brutal.

Brutal is not hyperbole. As a child, Ralf recalls a teacher who punished talkers by yanking their ears and facing them to the wall for fifteen minutes at a time. This wasn’t the 1950s; it was the 1970s. His father intervened, and the practice stopped. That memory lands like a stone in the room, and the conversation shifts. It’s a reminder that most of us have, stitched inside our learning story, a knot of shame or fear. The trick is not to pretend it isn’t there; it’s to cook with it anyway.

Takeaway: Protect your curiosity. It’s tender, and sometimes it needs you to be brave on its behalf.

“Learning Tastes Like Chilli”

We end where Ralf’s language is richest: taste. If learning were a flavor? “Chili,” he grins. Spicy. Add pepper. Add nine peppers. Add a steak if you’re feeling like a celebration, a flank if you want it quick, a spider if you want it quirky. The Mayor can’t resist: eleven barbecues, nine peppers—of course Ralf’s learning is hot and spicy. Of course.

There’s one more dream: flying. Years ago, on a naval air station, Ralf tasted the acceleration of takeoff and the relief of the landing. He felt the G-force press him into the seat. He would learn to fly if money and time were easy. Gliding? “No,” he says, smiling—and you can hear the engine-lover in him. It’s not judgment; it’s preference. Which is, in its own way, the surest form of learning: knowing the difference between a fascination and a fantasy. Between what you like and what you love.

Takeaway: Name the skill you would learn “if only…” Then remove one “if.”

Try This This Week

• A 60-minute experiment: Buy an ingredient you don’t fully understand—lemongrass, star anise, anchovies—and cook something you’ve never cooked. Goal: Make at least one mistake worth laughing about.
• A 20-minute tool audit: What single tweak would make a hobby you love easier? (A smaller grill, a better pan, a warmer pair of running gloves.) Buy the tweak, not the fantasy.
• A 10-minute story: Think of a product you care about at work. Write its origin story as if you were telling it to a friend who hates spec sheets. Tell it to someone tomorrow.

Because that’s how learning builds a life: not through grand pronouncements, but through tiny, spicy, memorable Mondays.