One Clear Day

I'm back in Lausanne this week, naturally, for my requisite three day/two night stay. I battled a second touch of the flu this past weekend after a tough week in Italy, not nearly as bad as my flu encounter in January but enough to slow me down. The weather on both ends of Switzerland (and also apparently northern Italy) this winter has been cold and wet, rain and snow. Fairly typical I believe, although a touch colder and snowier than last year.

I took advantage of a rare crisp mostly-sunny day yesterday (3ºC or about 37ºF) for a walk at lunchtime. I must interject that in German, "I went for a walk" is "Ich bin spazierengegangen", one of my favorite words. The only downside to our excellent office cafeteria (boiled beef in a red wine vinaigrette sauce yesterday - très bon!) is that one tends to be cooped up in the same building all day. That was a nice thing about working in the Wrigley Building in Chicago, you could walk outside everyday to a bustling different world.

Lac Léman or Lake Geneva is only about a 15 minute walk from the office, I discovered, just outside the crane and concrete borough. My nifty non-Blackberry but fancy camera-enabled phone captured a panorama of the lake with its swans, mountains and looming clouds. I had a feeling the views around here were spectacular, if you know when and where to uncover them.

Fruits of the Sea

OK, the final chapter of last week’s saga resumes with our barely grateful customer hosting the service rep and me to dinner on Thursday night. Seven of us--namely Mario, Fausto, Alessandro, Guglielmo, Claudio, Giuseppe and me--rendezvoused again in Savona at a seafood-only mom-and-pop joint with a rustic chaotic decor. The place was about as real Italian-Ligurian as they come, I suppose, given a cold rainy Thursday night in early February in little Savona; certainly no servers or other diners spoke English. As a double-Ausländer (German for foreigner), i.e., an American from Zürich, I was sort of the guest of honor. Meaning that courteous attention was given to inform me exactly what was being ordered, and then slyly inquisitive attention was given to exactly what I ate and how.

International business travelers know the key to a successful transaction depends not at all on their company’s offerings or service or technical details or contracts or whatever. No indeed, the key to a successful international business transaction is eating and drinking like your host. For example, in Mexico, eat breakfast from 10am-1:30pm including lots of corn tortillas, picante sauce and raw onions; in Korea, eat marinated BBQ’ed beef until your colon cries uncle (right, Jeff?); in Japan, eat eel sushi as long as your arm and wash it down with warm sake (right again?). Although I’m no master of authentic Asian cuisine, thanks to Steph’s and my Euro gastronomic adventures I’ve acquired a hand at chowing down like an Italian, Frenchman, Spaniard, etc. In my Savona case, I knew that one must sop up all remaining sauce or juices on every plate with the spongy rolls provided, one must twirl one's pasta with one's fork against a spoon, one must serve oneself slippery pieces of fish with fork nested into spoon like a European version of chopsticks, one must eat like he or she hasn't seen food in three days, and one must imbibe wine like Prohibition just lifted.

The first course consisted of five types of cold fructe de mare antipasto (think tentacles), followed by fish ravioli, followed by seafood linguini, followed by gigantic mussels in the shell, followed by the most enormous quantity and diversity of battered fried nautical fill-in-the-blank you can imagine, followed by dessert and naturally, espresso (the easiest rule is that not ordering coffee at the end of the meal insults the whole country).

The trickiest mealtime test, however, really challenged me--the dreaded gamberetti test. Each portion of seafood linguine came adorned with two enormous fully-intact shrimp, the gamberetti. I mistakenly left them for last, and when I glanced around at other plates for a clue on proper dismemberment protocol, everyone had already finished (please see, “Hasn’t seen food in three days” rule, above). So I attacked these treacherous gamberetti with knife and fork, succeeding only in halving them horizontally without piercing the hard shell underneath. Without breaking conversation, I noticed several tablemates peripherally glancing at my plate, awaiting my conclusion. Sweat bead on brow, I rested the utensils, grabbed a roll and sopped up some sauce to buy time. Was I finished? Throwing caution to the wind, and because the shrimp indeed looked quite delicious, I snatched up one slippery tail portion, ripped through the shell, extracted the meat and popped it down the hatch. I repeated with the body portion--slightly gunkier inside, eh?--and likewise the other shrimp, finally licking the oily sauce off my fingers as subtly as possible, wiping a napkin and pretending nothing had happened. Apparently I passed with flying colors and did not mistake my colleagues’ curiosity, as one laughingly mentioned in Italian and my service rep translated, “He doesn’t speak Italian, but he eats like an Italian.”

Alongside the food, plenty of prosecco sparkling wine and the local white were repeatedly poured into tiny glasses throughout the meal. The overall serving quantities blew past "All you care to eat", surpassed even "All you think you can eat" to stop somewhere near "All you can do not to lose it". Without much exaggeration, I had problems breathing because my stomach had expanded where my lungs usually are.

I bid them Ciao! after working again Friday morning, catching the 12:30pm train from Savona to Milan and then boarding the despised gimpy Scheiss-alpino (SwissGuy thankfully corrected me, the Cisalpino is an Italian- not Swiss-maintained train line) again missing its connection for another 90 minute delay, finally depositing me home--exhausted and still bloated from Thursday--at a relaxing 8:30pm. Work trip completed.


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Of Frittata and Farinata

I must finish last week's story and also provide additional color commentary on that substance so near and dear to every Italian's (European's?) heart--food. This business trip made my fourth and longest visit to Italy (all in the last twelve months, can you believe it?) and provided a certainly more authentic glimpse of everday life than any vacation could (or may want to).

Our daily cafeteria lunches continued to amuse me much as my company's lunches do with their regional loyalty--frittata, pesto linguini, saltimbocca, etc., and always a first course of pasta followed by a second course of protein, either of them alone large enough for a lunch portion. I still have to give the slight edge to our Lausanne kitchen, however, both for quality of preparation and portion sizes large enough to stuff a water buffalo.

My service rep and I dined Tuesday evening at a popular Savona staple called Farinata, which serves a mandatory and fantastic appetizer of Ligurian-specialty yellow-flour flatbread, also called farinata (funny how that works). The rest of the evening featured various forms of seafood, of which I recognized not a single fish name, all delicious. The wine also flowed freely, as we had suffered several setbacks during our Tuesday troubleshooting.

Wednesday was "do-or-die" day, but our technical luck improved enough to survive Thursday afternoon's cross-examination of results; we weren't sure if we'd be kicked out of the plant, that's only happened to me once before. For some reason the Italian Technical Director kept aiming pointed questions at me, despite repeated protestations that I'm the new guy. Ultimately we represented ourselves well enough that our customer hosted us out for dinner on Thursday for our hard work and 11-12 hour days. But there was enough entertainment during dinner that I think I’ll expound in another post…

Mediterranean Mocha & Molybdenum

I’ve mastered the art of pinpointing ugly industrial pockets in otherwise gorgeous locales. First my crane-and-concrete suburb of Lake Geneva in the Swiss canton Vaud--featuring otherwise stunning views of mountains, lakes and vineyards--and this week’s business trip to the refinery skyline and container-laden Italian port town of Vado Ligure--on an otherwise elegant sweep of hillside villages and beachfront cafés overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Hey, I’ll take what I can get. Monday’s miserable cold and rainy conditions gave way to clear and cold on Tuesday, which at least improved the views.

I’m providing more moral than technical support as my company’s service rep wrestles with his toughest installation in 10 years. I’m attempting my best salesperson-y effort to sometimes charm the various managers and supervisors to keep them at bay (charming is easier when you’re an exotic foreigner like me). An occasional cultural intermission breaks up our tedious 12-hour workdays in a dated laboratory staring at a computer monitor. In the lab’s back cubicle, the technicians (or “lab rats” as they’re affection- ately known) prepare authentic Italian mocha coffee and educate me on its finer points. There is no chocolate added to mocha, heavens no. Mocha is a particular type of coffee bean, renowned for its naturally chocolaty flavor notes, ground coarsely and prepared in a special stovetop chrome Italian percolator (there are plenty of hotplates in a lab); barely an ounce is served to each person and most importantly, it must be enjoyed while sitting. The second type of Italian coffee, espresso (maybe you’ve heard of it), is finely ground, prepared with hot water under 6-7 bars of pressure (never in the stovetop percolator) and can be enjoyed while standing. The third and final type of Italian coffee is Napolitano from the south, somehow very different but we didn’t go into the details. I’m served on average two mochas per day during breaks waiting for data, unless we want to walk three flights of stairs down to the espresso machine, which we also do on average twice per day.

The plant’s slightly dingy cafeteria is a funny cousin to our spotless Swiss kitchen in Lausanne. Yesterday’s fare was naturally Italian ravioli and osso bucco instead of French rabbit or pheasant. Everyone eats packages of thin grissini breadsticks, and two types each of olive oil and vinegar sit on every table to dress salads, cold cuts or vegetables; we have neither breadsticks nor olive oil in Lausanne. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow offers. Dinners at night between the service rep and me have been fish, fish and fish in various forms and wine, wine, wine, also in various forms.

Also in case you were wondering, molybdenum is element #42 on the Periodic Table and if we’re really lucky sometime today or tomorrow, we’ll find some in our customer’s samples like they’re requesting. Ciao for now!

On The Road Again

The adventures continue to unfold unfortu- nately too rapidly to catalog. I haven’t yet completed my description of apartment living in an industrial park with my new executive roommate, or how I contracted the flu sledding recklessly down a ski slope in pitch dark with a flashlight on my head, or how we just completed our eighth ski day this season in Davos during the World Economic Forum, and now I’m already on my first Euro business trip, solo to Italy to visit an angry customer.

I’ve perhaps mentioned in the past how Italy--despite its doubtless worldwide popularity and ample blessings--is not my all-time favorite European country. Perhaps we’re spoiled by the prim facilities of the bubble of Switzerland, but particularly on 7+ hour train rides, one becomes accustomed to spotless stations, stopwatch-precision arrival and departure, and odorless and temperature-controlled cabins. In Italy, not so much. Good thing I’m traveling first class.

After six weeks on the job I presented my results to date--primarily market research-type stuff gathered from various sources chairbound at my desk--to the GM and some other managers last week. They seemed satisfied, but I’m nearing the end of gleaning useful information by sitting still. So I jumped on the opportunity to weasel into an important new customer that’s having problems implementing one of our products. Under the guise of providing technical support (in an industry where I have six weeks of experience--ha!), I’m harboring the larger goal of witnessing firsthand their industry niche. I met the customer previously in our Lausanne office and I’ll join my company’s Service Rep on-site, so I’m not flying totally blind. But I arranged the travel on a shoestring timeline, half-confirming the trip Friday afternoon, trusting my Italian service rep (whom I’ve never met) to find me at the closest train station in a nearby village, and booking my international train ticket at the Zürich station at 6:45am Monday for a 7:02am departure. I haven’t even booked a return trip, uncertain how long my “services” are required.

So I’m currently traveling to Vado Ligure, Italy, on the Mediterranean coast about two hours south of Milan. I would be working instead of blogging, but I can’t find an Internet connection since leaving Switzerland. Northern Italy is blanketed in snow, pure white and flat since emerging from the Alps. The notoriously unreliable Swiss Cisalpino train line that services Italy is suffering further delays after recently finding mechanical problems on aging trains, requiring slower travel until the fleet can be repaired. So my planned 6:15 ride duration is now closer to 7:45, with an extra connection in Genova. Ugh. Still much cheaper and flexible travel than a plane, though.

Do you know the myth about international work travel? That it’s almost like a vacation, fun and cool to see new places on your company’s dollar. My opinion is that it’s usually quite wearying with precious little resemblance to vacation. If you’re lucky enough to have a desirable destination, occasionally there’s a little time to see the city. More usually it’s like a tough work day with difficult logistics.

But on the bright side, the novelty remains entertaining for now and I’m visiting a new region…currently looking out the train window on the rainy Mediterranean. Only thirty minutes more until my (hopeful) rendezvous in Savona. Then the hard part begins. Besides, it could be much worse—I could be traveling to Lagos, Nigeria, like I probably will sooner or later or, like Stephanie in two weeks, to Dushanbe, Tajikistan. The world is our oyster…wish us luck!