René Seifert – Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Whilst sitting in my hotel in Amsterdam, it’s time for a little re-cap from the yearly outbreak which my best friends from school and I have been establishing in the last 8 years: Going to my home in Rovinj (Croatia) and just letting go. We have know each other for more than 20 years by now, and it is amazing to see that it doesn’t take more than the blink of an eye to regress into the same sort of collective behaviour we were displaying when we were 16 :-)

Here is the picture set on Flickr we are for the official group picture of MännerMitÄhre with the neat marine-blue uniform.

Apart from having a good time in general, playing tennis and eating well in particular, last Sunday we were out for a nice excursion on the Eastern coast of Istra, the northern Croatian peninsula where I to my own dismay have never been.

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We were heading on the expressway towards Pula, from there up again to Labin, a historic town with a clock tower which offers beautiful view into the surrounding landscape as well as Rabac (see here, with the island Cres in the background)

Rabac could theroretically be beautiful, but it’s not. The favourable setting on a secluded piece of beach is entirely overshadowed by one of the ugliest excesses of socialist architecture geared to attract package tourism. Rabac is a place to stop by for an hour and then quickly continue northwards on the Magistrale road with impressive views of the Kvarner Bay. Here I dug out a video from our last year’s MännerMitÄhre vacation in Croatia, where I was flying-pilot of a chartered Cessna 172 with Juri on board filming:

The true splendor of Istra with its history of the K&K Habsburg-Empire becomes palpable in Lovran, and even more so in it’s bigger sister 8 km north Opatija. Its architecture narrates stories of the times when the Austrian Emperor as well as Sissy came here to do something good for their health – something that plenty of physicians hurried to attribute to the very special climate of the place.True or not, Opatija boasts an amazing seaside perfect for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

Hence, there couldn’t be a better place for MännerMitÄhre for a memorable good time in 2009 and we are already planning for and looking forward to Rovinj 2010.