Monday, January 10, 2011

Business Trips are not glamorous

Sometimes for my job I have to take a business trip.  They are less and less frequent thankfully and I often opt out when I can.  However, when I do go somewhere, it is usually to a place that sounds nice.  Paris, Barcelona, etc.  I know my wife has a totally different image in her head as to what a work trip is like.

I was fairly recently in Barcelona for a week, which sounds quite nice.  Here are the realities.

1) the office is not IN Barcelona, it is in Sant Cugat.  Which is a fair bit outside.  Here are a few comparisons.  Its like saying you are in Stuttgart when you are really in Böblingen.  Or you are in Toronto when you are really in Brampton or even that you are in New York but are really in New Jersey.

2) flying many short connecting flights in economy on the cheapest possible airline ticket is not nice.

3) in Barcelona I stay at the hotel which is walking distance to work.  about a 15 min walk in an industrial zone.  I am not knocking the hotel, it is clean and relatively comofortable, but this is FAR from luxury:

137145My room is firmly decorated with Spain’s glorious history in mind:

 

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and I would be remiss if I did not mention that the hotel is across the street from a power plant, offering delightful views…  Picturesque Barcelona at its finest.

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So, each morning, I wake up at the normal time, stroll over to the HP site, which is quite nice.  But really just a typical factory site with some palm trees in front of the entrance.

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It also seems that when in Spain, my head is even more massive than in germany.  Look at the size of this melon in my skillful self portrait.  CIMG0149     When I am there, I am just staying someplace not as nice as my own home, and going to an office very similar to the one I see every day.  There is nothing exciting or glamorous about business trips.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

you forget the getting up at an ungodly hour for flights or dinners with people you dont mind but would not normally give an evening up for.

Unknown said...

yep, this is largely true...unless you get to go to a cool conference (which is often nice). 1 more thing to add is that often you have to be well prepared before you go on a biz trip & have lots of additional work that you otherwise would not have to deal with...