EU Roadshow

My team spent 2 weeks doing a roadshow to visit clients. 27 meetings in total and everyone showed up, it was amazing. We spent the first week in London. Second week we left for Munich on Monday. On our way from the Munich airport we drove under a huge colored cut-out of the football player Kahn. It was covering the entire highway like a bridge. We then passed the football stadium and I started to get excited because the World Cup was just about to begin. Our entire Munich office went to the Opening game in Munich, and I'm glad Germany won. Our clients kept asking us for tickets, I wish we had more to give out!

We arrive at midnight on Monday. The next day we had 4 meetings and then took our clients out to dinner, it was a great night out. Went to bed at 2am and then up again at 4:30am for our flight to Hamburg. Hamburg was beautiful. Lufthansa is a great airline, I could actually eat what they served us and the seats were all leather like British Airways. Hamburg was beautiful. We had a crazy taxi driver who looked like he preferred gag-balls. He heard us talking about canal boats and gave us his card, apparently he's a boat captain, the photo of him at the helm looked seductive. He kept perving out Leah in the rear-view mirror to the point where we nearly rear-ended someone. Hamburg was a lovely town though we only hung out by the office building. The office is incredible. I love offices in Germnay, most of them (the nice ones) have atriums so when you walk in you still feel like your outside. There was no open seating, everyone had their own private offices. Lots of light and very nice. The social room had funky retro decorations, floral couches and of course foosball which is standard in all Yahoo offices world-wide!

The same day we arrived in Hamburg, we left and flew to Paris. We stayed at the Saint James and Albany hotel right by the Lourve. I somehow ended up in a palacial suite room with 2 stories, the second was a loft bedroom overlooking the main room. The doors were 2 stories high and opened to a long terrace overlooking the courtyard. I had 2.5 bathrooms to myself. The decor was old fashioned but it was comfortable. It was amazing!! One guy ended up on the 7th floor in a garret type room which was huge but had small port-sized windows. We all had a good laugh at our room situation. Andres room was the same and we could talk through the doors across the courtyard. The first night there we thought we needed some air and the weather was amazing. We walked around the Lourve, down the Siene to Notre Dame, and then found a little Bistro tucked away. The food was amazing but Ken's Pave made him ill the next day. We had figs, tri-color gazpacho, cheeses, salads, and a nice Chinon wine. A good night but ended late. The next day we had meetings all day and the treat was going out with the french team our last night in Paris. They are great, fun people. We had chamgpagne at a bar before dinner, then went to Le Tambour (the drummer). It's a wildy decorated 24 hour restraunt with huge portions. We had pear flavored digestives after our meals, it was a great evening to socialize with them and I learned some more French.

The next day we had 3 more meetings and then took off for Charles de Gaulle. I prefer to Eurostar but I went with the group on this one. The flight is only an hour and went well. CDG airport is hideous and disorganised though... makes me love the train even more! Getting home was a relief as we had zero sleep this week, but it was sucessful and worth it. I really like the team I work with and though we are busy it's still very enjoyable. Our Travel and Entertainment budget has been cut so I doubt I will have much work travel in the future... or at least for a while. It's nice though because it can burn you out. Things are always good in moderation :-)