My second day in Brno was a full day of work topped by a lovely dinner. I will take you through the day.
Brno city center.
I woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. Together with my colleague, we headed off to the customer site which was just a few kilometers away. I made sure to book a hotel with easy parking and just a few minutes drive from the customer’s address.
At the customer site, we were welcomed nicely, and the room booked for our 1.5 days round of meetings was fully stocked with snacks and drinks. They were spoiling us rotten! They also treated us to nice lunch onsite where we ate outdoors with a view to the water surrounding the property. It is beautiful here. They have a huge cafeteria serving all sorts of food.
In the evening, we met up with one of the customer contact. She was eager to give us a mini walking tour of the city and shel will join us for drinks and dinner after. Of course, we couldn’t say no to the mini walking tour invitation!
I took pictures. The late afternoon / early evening was somewhat grey. It also showered, but just a lil bit. We had umbrellas but my hair quickly curled, what can I do?
The city does remind me of Prague. Those pastel coloured buildings and a mix of architectural style, Renaissance, Rococo, Gothic, Baroque.
After the walking tour, we settled at the terrace of Hotel Grandezza for some drinks, a suggestion by our customer contact. We are going with the flow. She is the local so she knows the best (chic I mean!) places. I can’t remember what we ordered but it was something lime concocted. I know one of the drinks was a mojito.
After the drinks, we moved inside the Grandezza Restaurant. Our customer contact was asking us why we didn’t book this amazing hotel. Well, I had to follow corporate travel protocols and not book expensive 5-star hotel accommodations. I am at work you know, and not on holiday, and I need to make sure my travel expense gets approved so I get paid back.
But dining at the hotel’s restaurant would be fine. I was quite happy that we ate early because an hour later. a large group came. The interior of the restaurant was really nice, it was designed in an old-world and elegant gentleman’s manner. I could picture a muted cigar corner with a lounge and bar.
Our starters: Beef carpaccio topped with rucula, pickled onions and drops of mayonaise and some (cold I think?) soup with ham wrapped around a Grissini.
My main is a grilled fish (I think it was Forel) served on a bed of steamed spinach, boiled potatoes and Bearnaise sauce. This was very delicious.
I cannot deny the fact that Grandezza Hotel is gorgeous. I did check the room price and it wasn’t that bad.
After dinner, we head off for an early night at our hotel. We were very tired. It was a long grueling day of meetings, city walk and dinner socials. I can only think of jumping into bed.
We finished the next day with another set of meetings in the morning. We said our goodbyes and in the afternoon we drove back to Vienna to catch our plane in the early evening.
I realised I didn’t look good with short hair.
This is our driving route:
Returning the car was easy peasy, and then it was time to say goodbye to my Italian colleague.
This was a good trip for us, we managed to catch up on a lot of things, work-wise but also personally. There is always the odd politics at work. People will prefer to work with people that they like. The least we can do is assimmilate, by being friendly and respectful. But going beyond that such as getting to know the people you deal with on a daily and weekly basis will provide better leverage.
Dinner was at the airport.
Then it was time to fly home.
I normally travel for work within the 8-hour workhour period, but in some cases, you have to be flexible to travel during off-work hours.
But what do you know… after a month from this trip, the company decided to stop our business globally. It was one of those strange events in my career life, although at 50+ nothing surprises me already. We are talking about a Fortune 1000 Billion dollar company closing a large global division because the business does not support its core strategy anymore. We were number 1 in our industry globally!? Admittedly some regions were performing less, but in the region I was in, we were having 30%+ margins.
The good side of this was I was offered to stay longer to help with the winding down of the business for our European operations. I dealt with our shocked customers and partners. It was bizarre to turn off the lights of the business myself. Naturally, it came with some benefits. Then a few days into the chaos, one of my biggest customers passed on my name to a competitor, also a Billion dollar company. What are the odds? I now work for this company 🙂
Travel Period: June 2021
Happy Travels! Enjoy Life =)
