Archive for April, 2007
Rovinj in the Fog
I’ve been coming 30 years to Rovinj, but I’ve never seem such a weather phenomenon at plain daylight like yesterday. It was a warm and sunny day when all of a sudden the fog laid its cloth over the harbour. Looks like some rare inversion.
The best, however, was the magnificient church of St. Eufemia disappearing.
Two hours later, everything was over and the church back in place. Here, by the way, a few more pictures.
Happy Easter from the indolent Balkans
After the most intense, yet rewarding months of travelling in my life, I am happy to run on half cylinders in my Croatian home. Weather is nice, the fishermen’s village behaves as usually and the first tourists have poured in as well.
Just one thing sucks. The imbeciles from Croatian T-COM terminally switched off my internet at home. One could argue that it’s my fault as I failed to pay the bill for 3 months, although I had organized someone to do so. Shit happens. But what sucks even more is that you get lame answers from the service provider like: “prepayment is not possible” which would be obviously the easiest choice. And how about receiving the invoices per e-mail in order to become aware of outstanding debt? “Nema” (=does not exist) comes the a swift response. Welcome to the Balkans. Being half-Croatian and coming 36 years to this country, I feel reasonable safe to articulate a few blunt truths:
1. Work has certainly not been invented in Croatia.
2. Reliability is not a major trait either.
3. Service mentality to get the ass up for a customer is deeply stuck in a post-socialist mindset.
In most cases reputation is well deserved. Add other countries south of Croatia which have been part of former Yugoslavia, and you have them: The Balkans. Looking at the snail-like pace of their economic progress and correlating it to the multitude of personal experiences I have had, then they clearly are where they are, because they behave as they behave.
My view got amplified my meeting a devout Croatian Marko two days back here who was born and raised in Germany and is currently working in Offenbach, a city close to Frankfurt. “I love my country and if I had 8 mn Euro, I would move here immediately for living. But I would never want to make my living here.” You don’t need 8 mn Euro for a good life in Croatia, but it costst you at least 8 million nerve cells to get through the ever-prevailing indolence when you come with a “getting things done attitude.” Motherland, it’s wake-up time!
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Tanning Seat in Charter Planes
To take a chep ride on the stereotypes about tourists travelling in charter planes: They are drunk, they grab at the butts of flight attendants and they applaude after the landing. What else? They are pale. At least for the latter there is some remedy. Condor, a German charter airline, is offering since this month “inflight tanning“.
From € 8.- upwards the lamp in front of the passenger switches on and makes sure he or her doesn’t look like white cheese in the first days at the holiday destination.
Thank you, EO Tokyo!
There would be a novel to write as the days, and especially the nights, had been so intense; I couldn’t keep up with the writing as I had intended. So the essence of the essence, and the highlights of the highlights in hindsight now.
First and foremost, the “EO University” was amazing, no regular conference does remotely match the experience and bonding factor like a “club” of like minded people who are thirsty for learning, sharing and bonding. And our guests from the EO Chapter Japan played a vital role in this, likewise the professional EO staff who applied their profound event-marketing experience to make it all happen. A big, big “thank you” to all all involved.
Two things will certainly forever remain in my memory as “once in a lifetime experiences”, the first was the “purification ritual” in a Shinto shrine in Japan. Our profoundly knowledgable guide from the west, who used to live almost his whole life in Japan and had written several books on religion and culture, explained to us that never in Japanese history before, foreigners were allowed to take part in this ceremony. A ceremony which usually is reserved only for the priests of a shrine. The concept behind that a person, pure from birth, as pure as a mirror, becomes tainted with dust and imperfections which have to be cleansed away through a ceremony.
The priest for the ritual then went through one rehearsal with us, before we started the “hot action”. Around 35 men, only dressed in a sort of diaper and headband went outside, formed a circle and started moving and chanting as the priest was doing before us. For the actual purification, we ran back into a hall where we poured damn-cold water over our bodies, after which the ceremony was solemnly closed.
The other event was our last evening in Tokyo, informally organized by some members where we headed out for our “last supper”. It could have been taken litterally, because we went to one of the 35 restaurants from our fellow EO member from Japan, Daichi Sakamoto, who runs the chain of Torafugu. Only dish and speciality, the blowfish/Fugu. If the cook does not know how to prepare it, his guests are dead. Hence, it takes seven years (!) to train how to avoid hitting the poisonous entrails. And here is how it goes, as I had recorded with my small photo camera on video mode:
The dinner turned to a party, when Daichi and his wife surprisingly showed up, too, with a branch of cherry blossoms under their arm and several bottles of premium sake.
The best message: All alive. (Well, to be fair, in professional Japanese cuisine, no incident with the Fugu has happened in the last decades. But still, wenn pushing the first piece into your mouth, it does give you some kind of thrill … :-)
Once again, I feel humbled about fantastic experience how our friends in Japan were welcoming us. Next encounter, EO University in Berlin August 2007, looking very much forward.
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