Actually, Treviso Italy.  Not a lot to report today, as most of the day was spent in marketing and operations meetings.  I will say the meetings were consistently more productive and constructive than most.  Maybe it was the fact that most of crew was severely sleep deprived, or we sat at a new table format, or just the magic of Italy, but we got a lot of really positive energy going across the room.

We spent most of the meetings in this really cool refurbished villa owned by the company I work for.  Very nice, although you could find the bathrooms by following your nose.  Afterward we went into Treviso, a very cool small  walled town nearby.  I took a ton of photos and will eventually upload them to my Facebook page once I get home.  We wandered the city for a bit and eventually ended up at a small restaurant.

At that point the crew I was with opted to play the part of the drunken ugly American tour.   Loud and obnoxious.  I love those guys and have fun when they get hammered and tell each other inappropriate stories, but in terms of my Italian experience this was about as far as I could get without actually traveling back to America.  Surrounded by drunken English speaking Americans I might as well have been on Riverwalk in San Antonio with my Warhammer crew, although I have to say my company business associated tend to have more respect for me and seem less likely to jump on me for being human.  (I Drink Beer shirt courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category)

Don’t get me wrong.  I’ve known and respected these guys for almost 20 years and like them all to a man.  I just feel like we are back in New Hampshire when we all hang out like that.

More meetings today at the ultra modern hotel.  I am looking forward to them but am also dreading them, as I tend to check out during certain meetings pretty badly (cough cough marketing cough cough) and am going to be struggling even more due to the fact that a lot of these will be in Italian.  Wish me luck on that.

Thanks for reading.  Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu.  If you have any comments on Italy or these blogs feel free to leave them here.  Any off topic suggestions or questions can be posted here.  We are supposed to do some outdoor activities later and it is raining like hell, so I might find time to write up Snow White and the Huntsmen.  Talk to you soon.

Dave

Kind of a study in contrasts today.  This is when the business part of my business trip starts.  After a leisurely breakfast I was picked up by a raucous crowd of my fellow sales reps.  You see, sales reps by nature have kind of over the top personalities.  One on one that works great, and people love us and like buying from us (for the most part).  However, get more than a few of us in the same room together and it is like standing in a wind tunnel, except instead of air the tunnel is blowing a storm of sales gripes, bad stories, and fart jokes.

After a short drive through some mundane countryside we ended up at a hotel that almost comical in it’s contrast from my time in Venice.  It is termed a “business hotel” but could be more accurately described as a “correctional institute”.  It is ultra modern, yet bare and oppressive like a medical correctional facility.

Actually, now that I think about it, the building looks and feels like one of those Umbrella research facilities pre T virus outbreak.   Bare white corridors, sensing card keys, doors that would not have looked out of place as airlock portals, and everthing steel, white, grey, or beige.  If it weren’t for the cute girls behind the desk I would be expected to be experimented on this morning.  (Umbrella Corp logo image courtesy of the Zombie Movie T Shirt category)

The room itself is surreal, in that the first one the window or air conditioning didn’t work (this is a brand new building), the beds are tiny, only about 1/2 the light switches actually connect to anything, the shower seems specifically designed to spill water all over the floor, and the room has this power saving feature that requires you to leave your key in a slot by the door or 30 seconds later the power in the room goes off.  This is all well and good until your roommate opts to leave the room while you are in the shower, leaving you dripping wet and stumbling around the room naked looking for your key (thanks, Frank).

The guy with the car had to go back to the airport to pick up more of our sales reps, and he dropped me and two others off in a small town to kill time.  We had a good lunch (Italian food.  Go figure).  At that point we discovered that small Italian towns on a Sunday are pretty much deserted wastelands.  We must have walked two miles (5 km) and saw maybe four people.  None of the shops were open.  We ended up sitting on a park bench only to find our friends were having lunch at the exact same restaurant we had eaten at.

After that it was an afternoon and evening of hanging out with my loud American friends.  I have to say after three days in charming, quiet Venice being in this ultra-modern eyesore and surrounded by boisterous Americans really made me start to wish I was back in Venice.  As I sit here typing I suddenly realize that in spite of all my bitching about stuff I have been really captivated by that town and the culture.  I will be back in three days after a bunch of meetings.  I won’t say these meetings will be bad, as they really are important to my business, but I think I will be happy to be back in the heart of the canals again.

Dave