About 5-6 years ago i worked for an internet software company. They thought it would be a great idea to get everyone from the various offices (London, Holland (can't remember place name sorry), Edinburgh) together for a big happy team-building exercise of the sort beloved of whalesong-inspired marketing types. This despite the fact that the London contingent, who were the majority, were well known to the HR people as a bunch of drunken, albeit hardworking and clever, maniacs.
Any road up, off we all went to Vienna for four (count 'em) days in a swanky hotel, to be team-built and have lots of tech talks and stuff. So obviously we all got hammered for four days straight. By the second morning they were sending HR patrols out to the worst culprits' rooms to make sure they got up. It was fun, if painful. Cost thema bloody fortune. I think the HR types learned more than we did - there never was another jolly quite like that...
...except for two years later when they thought it would be safe to get us all together for two days on one of those 'management retreat' style places in the middle of nowhere. Result: an over-competitive football match between the UK and Dutch offices (3-1 to the UK since you ask), an, erm, enthusiastic night in the bar involving some rather odd behaviour on the bus in the foyer (I kid you not) and ending up at 3 in the morning with the MD and his sidekick joining 15 of us for a spliff at an after-curfew party in someone's room.
Ah, those were the days...
----------------------------- A Møøse once bit my sister ...
Posts: 682 | Location: Edinburgh, UK | Registered: 08 December 2005
I once had to go to a small village church in the Black Forest, in a big silver Mercedes with chauffeur.
That car was noch chosen because of me, though. On the back seat of this Mercedes we had a plain wooden box. The contents of this box were worth about half a million Euros: a gothic reliquary, a splendid life-size golden head. The golden head contains the real skull of a saint who had been murdered in the 7th century. (He would never have imagined being driven around in a Mercedes, I guess.)
The reliquary, a masterpiece of medieval goldsmith's work, had been in an exhibition and was now transported back "home".
Posts: 218 | Location: Karlsruhe/Germany | Registered: 06 May 2005
Coolest place: Bratislava, SK - to visit Slovak National Television to try out their TV scheduling software as reconaissance for the company I work for.
Best Place: Cannes Baby! The annual TV festival there is the ideal opportunity to drink hard on the company plastic during the evenings and schmooze over new TV shows during the day
Santiago, Chile on 14th July and no idea where to go next!??!
Posts: 8 | Location: London, England | Registered: 23 February 2006
Just remembered a couple of other places my company sent me that were pretty cool ... didn't think of them in my earlier post since they were pretty close to home so I kind of took them for granted.
1) After the completion of a very large project, the leadership offered everyone a weekend in New York City and we could bring our families, too (OK some of you may not consider that a benefit :-). I ended up going with just my 12 year old son and had one of the greates weekends of my life. We stayed in mid-town Manhatten at a great hotel. On Friday night we saw the Christmas Show at Raido City Music Hall and then went to Sardi's for desert. Saturday morning we had to listen to a couple of motivational speakers so the company could technically call it a work day. One was quite boring but the other really was very funny and entertaining. Afternoon was on our own and then ice skating in Central Part Saturday evening. The company leased out a tent and served appetizers and desserts all evening. It was the most magical evening ... a gentle snowfall, Christmas music piped in, and the New York sky-line lit up all around us. It would have been perfect if I didn't keep falling on my butt :-) ... always was a lousy ice skater! My son and I would have snowball fights everywhere we went ... through Central park, on Broadway - just a perfect weekend. The company paid for just about everything.
2) Another time, we had a two-day off-site held at an inn on the shore in Massachusetts. Just beautiful with a nice trail for walking along the Atlantic Coast. We had a similar two-day off-site at another inn/spa in New Hampshire where they provided chair massages (we got the massages, not the chairs)
3) Also, went to Maine a few times ... one time we went to a 'lobster shack' for sea food ... right on a prototypical craggy Maine coastal area. Really cool.
It's funny, in general, I really don't like my job that much nor am I very fond of life in a coporate cubicle, but I've gotten to go to some pretty cool places and I must say my boss is probably the nicest, most decent human being in the world.
Posts: 12 | Location: U.S. | Registered: 19 January 2006
I was recruited by the British Council to go to Kasane in Botswana to teach science to the local children for 4 years it was the best job I've ever had and wish that I still had it.
itu matengu
Posts: 339 | Location: Manchester or Maun | Registered: 25 November 2003
I used to travel for work a lot but not as much now. Work has taken me to:
SPAIN: Barcelona,Madrid, Marbella ITALY: Rome, Milan (Venice was a day off) HONGKONG: twice MALAYSIA LONDON - for a feasbility study, and then worked there for 2 years after US - San Francisco
They were all pretty cool experiences, especially Barcelona and Rome.
It's a toss up between Whitehorse, Yukon and San Antonio, Texas.
They've sent me twice to Whitehorse for meetings and once to San Antonio for a conference. Whitehorse is amazing and Texas was interesting - not somewhere I would have gone on my own dime, but great to see.
I've only been sent to two places for work -- Houston, TX and Bangalore, India. Guess which was more fun?
Houston seemed pretty dull, and I was only there for a couple of days. I was in Bangalore for three fantastic weeks though. My company put me up in a swanky hotel, and given the exchange rate (USD to Indian Rupees), a meal in one of Bangalore's best restaurants cost as much as at a low-end restaurant in the States. Of course it didn't matter that much since the company was paying for all of it.
India was interesting, delightful, depressing, confusing, dazzling...and so on.
If I went back to India on my own, I wouldn't spend as much money though -- not only because I'd be paying for it myself, but because being in a high-class hotel isolated me a bit from the real experience of the place.
Posts: 13 | Location: USA | Registered: 02 August 2006
Trinculo- few places I have been to in this world is as bad as Houston Texas. I am sure there is someplace, but not a single place is coming to mind right now.
I get to travel a fair bit with work. In the last two weeks I have been in Prague and Amsterdam. I usually get to travel a couple of times a month. The most exciting place so far is Malaysia, but I am going to be traveling to Cape Town soon. So that should be good.
"Trips are not trips to me. They have to be expeditions. I blame this all on Lord Baden-Powell"- Jimmy Buffett
I'm leaving in 2 weeks to go play a hotel gig in Ireland, County Mayo for Sep and Oct. The coolest thing is it's my springboard for my RTW journey, not booking anything after that, just going to see what my travels bring about. But my ticket to Dublin is one way- yeah!!!
Floss
Posts: 16 | Location: Columbia River, on a boat | Registered: 26 March 2006
We put on two or three trade shows a year for work in the US and I also attend a few others. Since most of my "personal" traveling is focused on leaving the country, this works out great. This year I was able to go to Miami, Las Vegas, Boston, NY, and Washington, DC. We also get to fly out early or stay late (if you want to use PTO) so I've been able to do that and see some sights as well (Grand Canyon, Zion, Natl Park, Bryce Canyon)...
When I was teaching in Hiroshima, I had to go to Kagoshima, the southernmost city in Kyushu (the third biggest island in Japan) to set up a conference. All of my co-workers had to head off to Fukuoka that night, bit somebody had to stay behind to clean up. I spent the next day hiking up the volcano and enjoying the falling ash and atmospheric earthquakes.
Also, when I was in the US Air Force during the cold war and stationed in Anchorage, Alaska I got to go on some pretty amazing trips. I'm not at liberty to say where or why. I can say that it's incredible what happens to everyday objects at 60 below...
__________________________ "Suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either."
Posts: 5549 | Location: Jackson Heights, Queens | Registered: 11 September 2006
