Monday, January 29, 2007
Budapest, Hungary
In the past 2 weeks I visited Budapest twice for work. However, I also managed to do some sightseeing, as I spent one weekend extra there, and I must say that Judit's city is very nice.
The InBev office is inside Duna Towers, a huge office building on the riverside just outside the center of Budapest.
A remarkable feature of Budapest are its bridges over the Danube. All of them are big and impressive, and come with complicated names, like everything else in Hungarian. (For example, at McDonalds I ate some csirkeszarnydarabok, that means chicken wings.) You can see 3 of them (bridges, not chicken wings) in the pictures below.
When I was arriving to Budapest I remembered that more than 2 years ago, Eva and Dina from the Hungarian National Trainers Team stayed with me for a few days in Brussels. I still had Eva's phone number, so I sent her an SMS and we met for lunch and a city tour. Robert called Karolina, his Polish friend who lived in Prague till this summer, so like that we had 2 qualified guides for the weekend.
... and here are some other nice pics.
See you!
The InBev office is inside Duna Towers, a huge office building on the riverside just outside the center of Budapest.
A remarkable feature of Budapest are its bridges over the Danube. All of them are big and impressive, and come with complicated names, like everything else in Hungarian. (For example, at McDonalds I ate some csirkeszarnydarabok, that means chicken wings.) You can see 3 of them (bridges, not chicken wings) in the pictures below.
When I was arriving to Budapest I remembered that more than 2 years ago, Eva and Dina from the Hungarian National Trainers Team stayed with me for a few days in Brussels. I still had Eva's phone number, so I sent her an SMS and we met for lunch and a city tour. Robert called Karolina, his Polish friend who lived in Prague till this summer, so like that we had 2 qualified guides for the weekend.
... and here are some other nice pics.
See you!
Saturday, January 20, 2007
NEXT 2007 - Find yourself
Here is the promised report of NEXT, the conference I facilitated last week.
Overall it was a very nice and well-organised conference, with an agenda that left enough space for personal talks so the people could get to know each other better. Highlights were definitely the panel discussion with 6 generations of MCP alumni, the atmosphere after elections and the introduction of the MCVP candidates at the official dinner.
It was also fun to see the company I work for from a different perspective, as Marcelo was a guest speaker and delivered a workshop on leadership styles. He also brought me the news that I would be working in Hungary the day after the conference...
I only returned from Hungary on Wednesday, and I am about to take the plane to go work there again right now.
The report of that interesting business travel experience will follow asap.
For now, I still want to share some conference pics. I have commented them as usual, so if you point at them, you know what you're looking at.
Overall it was a very nice and well-organised conference, with an agenda that left enough space for personal talks so the people could get to know each other better. Highlights were definitely the panel discussion with 6 generations of MCP alumni, the atmosphere after elections and the introduction of the MCVP candidates at the official dinner.
It was also fun to see the company I work for from a different perspective, as Marcelo was a guest speaker and delivered a workshop on leadership styles. He also brought me the news that I would be working in Hungary the day after the conference...
I only returned from Hungary on Wednesday, and I am about to take the plane to go work there again right now.
The report of that interesting business travel experience will follow asap.
For now, I still want to share some conference pics. I have commented them as usual, so if you point at them, you know what you're looking at.
Monday, January 08, 2007
What's next?
NEXT is next. NEXT is a national conference of AIESEC in Czech Republic, where I will be one of the facilitators during the coming days.
I am now packing and tomorrow I will go to the conference, straight from the office.
I am sure I will have a lot of experiences to share and a lot of sleep to catch up when I return next Sunday.
I am now packing and tomorrow I will go to the conference, straight from the office.
I am sure I will have a lot of experiences to share and a lot of sleep to catch up when I return next Sunday.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Carnival birthday party at Club Nebe
I got this nice invitation from Ilia and Alice for the first really cool party of 2007:
"It's official, the party is ON! A little bit of Carnival will take place in our good ole Praha on the first weekend of 2007.
We would like to invite all of you to our birthday celebration. It just so happens that her birthday is on the 5th and mine is on the 6th of January. And luckily for me Alice is Brazilian, so I'll be mooching of her Brasileiro Coolness by getting in on the Carnival Vibe..."
When I took my Indian kurta to Czech Republic I was not expecting to wear it very often, but yesterday was finally the occasion. To answer the 2 most popular questions: Yes, this is actually male clothing and Yes people do find it a bit strange when you are wearing it on the Prague subway.
Here are a few trendspotting pics:
"It's official, the party is ON! A little bit of Carnival will take place in our good ole Praha on the first weekend of 2007.
We would like to invite all of you to our birthday celebration. It just so happens that her birthday is on the 5th and mine is on the 6th of January. And luckily for me Alice is Brazilian, so I'll be mooching of her Brasileiro Coolness by getting in on the Carnival Vibe..."
When I took my Indian kurta to Czech Republic I was not expecting to wear it very often, but yesterday was finally the occasion. To answer the 2 most popular questions: Yes, this is actually male clothing and Yes people do find it a bit strange when you are wearing it on the Prague subway.
Here are a few trendspotting pics:
Monday, January 01, 2007
10 last memories of 2006
As I haven't been updating for a while now, I'll make a fresh blogging start for 2007, but first I still want to share 10 moments from the last weeks of 2006.
In the last week of November, my family was visiting me in Prague. It was really nice to be able to show the city to my mom, dad and sister. I had to work during the days, but in the evenings and during the weekend we could spend a lot of time together. It was funny to live with the whole family in the apartment instead of in our house in Belgium. The most important tourism highlights of this week were Vysehrad, Petrin and of course the Prague castle and the Charles bridge.
As the exams were getting closer, the Prague AIESEC comittees were holding their last meetings of 2006 and gathering everyone for some nice parties. The highlight was LC Day II, a gathering of LC Praha, including a great tram party. For those who are not familiar with the concept, here in Prague you can rent a tram and then ride around in the city with a whole group of people. Everybody brings one drink and along the way you just share and have fun. After the party the tram drops you at a club, in this case Lucerna Music Bar, where the party continues. A very nice surprise in the party was that Dani from Brasil was visiting Prague and joined us for the party. I never got round to visiting her in Amsterdam, but at least now we met again in Prague.
AIESEC CZU Prague had their annual Ceremonial meeting. This is an evening where the partners and parents are invited to get to know more about AIESEC and meet each other. The committee invited me to speak about my experience here in Czech Republic and I gladly accepted. It was really funny to have Lukas as my translator, hearing all my words being repeated in Czech.
On 7th of December, InBev rented Mecca Club for the company Christmas dinner and party. A tropical party theme made the atmosphere a bit unusual for the period, but we had a great time. And yes, of course the beer was free.
2 days later my colleague Matous had his birthday. I went to his party with Katka and Judit and we had a nice evening in a typical Czech bar in Letna.
In the following weekend, AIESEC Praha organised some important cultural preparation. Because the holiday season was getting closer, they decided to introduce us to the typical Czech (and Slovak) customs of Christmas and Easter. We got together in the Andel trainee flat to celebrate these 2 holidays in 1 day. It was a really fun event where we could find out a lot about the traditions and actually try things out ourselves. We were trying the food, painting eggs, decorating the Christmas tree, etc.
In the middle of December I unexpectedly got sent to Belgium for a last-minute business trip. I managed to get a flight schedule with the return flight to Prague on Sunday night, so I could visit friends in Belgium and have an early Christmas dinner with the family. In this way, I enjoyed the Christmas atmosphere both at home and in Prague. I visited the Christmas market in Leuven with all the InBev interns from our global headquarters. Belgians reading this will be jealous to know that I was there exactly during the performance of Eddy Wally. The AIESEC in Belgium MC Christmas party was happening in the flat this year, so I saw my previous house again as well.
In the Christmas weekend, Crystal, the PwC coordinator was visiting me. We had some fun exploring Prague, where the Christmas Eve preparation was going on. Small stands on the street were selling carp (the traditional fish people eat here at Christmas) and people were doing some last shopping. We also went out of the city on a day trip to Kutna Hora. This city is famous for its Charnel House, a church in the middle of the cemetery which has been decorated with the skeletons of 40000 people who died when the Plague epidemic hit the city. It seems that visiting this impressive monument is not really a Christmas activity, because we were all alone there.
On Christmas eve we had a potluck dinner with the internationals who decided to stay in Prague. At a potluck dinner everyone cooks a dish of their choice and shares it with the others. The result was a dinner with Indian, Chinese, Greek, Swedish and many other influences. I was asked to prepare the soup and I wanted to go for a cooking challenge, so I decided to make "Google soup". You just enter "soup" in Google and you hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. The result was the Elegant Wild Rice Soup from AllRecipes.com, which was very tasty.
This weekend we had the traditional AIESEC Praha New Years Eve. Hartoska wanted to try and make it a small intimate event, but as AIESEC parties always attract a lot of people we ended up with a full tram of AIESECers and many of their friends from around the world. Friday we went for dinner, on Saturday we had another tram party (same concept: first a tram ride around the city and then a party in Lucerna Music Bar), and then we had the real New Year's Eve last night. We went for a dinner in restaurant U Sadu, and then we went up on the Petrin hill, where you can look out over all of Prague. This city really goes crazy for the New Year. Fireworks are just everywhere and it's fabulous (and much safer) to watch it from a distance, standing on this hill.
In the last week of November, my family was visiting me in Prague. It was really nice to be able to show the city to my mom, dad and sister. I had to work during the days, but in the evenings and during the weekend we could spend a lot of time together. It was funny to live with the whole family in the apartment instead of in our house in Belgium. The most important tourism highlights of this week were Vysehrad, Petrin and of course the Prague castle and the Charles bridge.
As the exams were getting closer, the Prague AIESEC comittees were holding their last meetings of 2006 and gathering everyone for some nice parties. The highlight was LC Day II, a gathering of LC Praha, including a great tram party. For those who are not familiar with the concept, here in Prague you can rent a tram and then ride around in the city with a whole group of people. Everybody brings one drink and along the way you just share and have fun. After the party the tram drops you at a club, in this case Lucerna Music Bar, where the party continues. A very nice surprise in the party was that Dani from Brasil was visiting Prague and joined us for the party. I never got round to visiting her in Amsterdam, but at least now we met again in Prague.
AIESEC CZU Prague had their annual Ceremonial meeting. This is an evening where the partners and parents are invited to get to know more about AIESEC and meet each other. The committee invited me to speak about my experience here in Czech Republic and I gladly accepted. It was really funny to have Lukas as my translator, hearing all my words being repeated in Czech.
On 7th of December, InBev rented Mecca Club for the company Christmas dinner and party. A tropical party theme made the atmosphere a bit unusual for the period, but we had a great time. And yes, of course the beer was free.
2 days later my colleague Matous had his birthday. I went to his party with Katka and Judit and we had a nice evening in a typical Czech bar in Letna.
In the following weekend, AIESEC Praha organised some important cultural preparation. Because the holiday season was getting closer, they decided to introduce us to the typical Czech (and Slovak) customs of Christmas and Easter. We got together in the Andel trainee flat to celebrate these 2 holidays in 1 day. It was a really fun event where we could find out a lot about the traditions and actually try things out ourselves. We were trying the food, painting eggs, decorating the Christmas tree, etc.
In the middle of December I unexpectedly got sent to Belgium for a last-minute business trip. I managed to get a flight schedule with the return flight to Prague on Sunday night, so I could visit friends in Belgium and have an early Christmas dinner with the family. In this way, I enjoyed the Christmas atmosphere both at home and in Prague. I visited the Christmas market in Leuven with all the InBev interns from our global headquarters. Belgians reading this will be jealous to know that I was there exactly during the performance of Eddy Wally. The AIESEC in Belgium MC Christmas party was happening in the flat this year, so I saw my previous house again as well.
In the Christmas weekend, Crystal, the PwC coordinator was visiting me. We had some fun exploring Prague, where the Christmas Eve preparation was going on. Small stands on the street were selling carp (the traditional fish people eat here at Christmas) and people were doing some last shopping. We also went out of the city on a day trip to Kutna Hora. This city is famous for its Charnel House, a church in the middle of the cemetery which has been decorated with the skeletons of 40000 people who died when the Plague epidemic hit the city. It seems that visiting this impressive monument is not really a Christmas activity, because we were all alone there.
On Christmas eve we had a potluck dinner with the internationals who decided to stay in Prague. At a potluck dinner everyone cooks a dish of their choice and shares it with the others. The result was a dinner with Indian, Chinese, Greek, Swedish and many other influences. I was asked to prepare the soup and I wanted to go for a cooking challenge, so I decided to make "Google soup". You just enter "soup" in Google and you hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. The result was the Elegant Wild Rice Soup from AllRecipes.com, which was very tasty.
This weekend we had the traditional AIESEC Praha New Years Eve. Hartoska wanted to try and make it a small intimate event, but as AIESEC parties always attract a lot of people we ended up with a full tram of AIESECers and many of their friends from around the world. Friday we went for dinner, on Saturday we had another tram party (same concept: first a tram ride around the city and then a party in Lucerna Music Bar), and then we had the real New Year's Eve last night. We went for a dinner in restaurant U Sadu, and then we went up on the Petrin hill, where you can look out over all of Prague. This city really goes crazy for the New Year. Fireworks are just everywhere and it's fabulous (and much safer) to watch it from a distance, standing on this hill.
