Day 1 - Sunday May 23, 2010Arrived in Istanbul around 11am. Did some sightseeing once we arrived on land. Went to the Blue Mosque, St. Sophia Museum, and the Hippodrome. Found out that the Blue Mosque was the 3rd largest duomo in the World, next to the duomo in Florence and St. Peters in Rome. That just means that I've now been to the 3 largest duomos in the worlds, now that's impressive. Learned that the St. Sophia Museum cost $80 billion dollars to construct. $80 billion dollars.
The 1st night we visited the main strip in Istanbul and ate at a place called Pia. I had the Chicken Pia which was essentially chicken in some turkish sauce, french fries, and peppers. A fairly low key night since we were travelling 20+ hours the night before. Night night.
Day 2 – Monday May 24, 2010Today we went on 2 business visits. The morning session was the American Business Forum and the afternoon session was Kagider, a women’s entrepreneurship organization.
The morning session started off a bit rough, didn’t seem like the presenters were very prepared. It ended up turning out ok once folks started asking questions. The Forum is an organization made up of American Companies that are doing business in Turkey and the main driver behind this group is to share experiences, best practices, and determine how best to succeed in doing business in Turkey. The presenters were from Cushman & Wakefield and CitiBank.
Kagider is an organization focused on promoting entrepreneurship to women and supporting women in business in Turkey. The primary services that Kagider provide include leadership training and development, government lobbying, and initiating awards such as Women’s Entrepreneur of the Year to promote women’s entrepreneurship in Turkey.
After the business visits we went to the Grand Bazaar which is essentially a huge indoor flea market. Apparently negotiation is the name of the game here. Our tour guide (who also happens to own one of the shops in the bazaar) said that if you pay anything more than half of the original price, then you paid too much. He also said not to feel bad for negotiating or to feel guilty at all, it’s all a part of the experience and he said the Turkish expect it and embrace it.
After the Grand Bazaar, we walked to dinner and ate at a traditional Turkish place called “The Pudding Shop”. This was a recommendation from our tour guide, Yucel (pronounced yoo-jel). Food was great, beer was smooth and company was good as well. I ate with the usual suspects, Jeff, Meg, Annette, and Mark. I had a traditional dish…chicken kebab, rice, and French Fries! Every meal that we had in Turkey was served with a couple of French Fries on the side, very interesting.
After dinner, we walked to a local establishment to hang out and have a few drinks and smoke some hookah like the locals do! I tried the hookah just to say I did, but didn’t do too much of it. I believe the name of the place we went to was called Ozakler Restaurant. It was in an alley where they had tables set up and big couch pillows all around the tables. Very chill location. We downed a couple more Efes and we were good to go! Lots of laughs for sure. On the way home, we decided we would walk from Asia to Europe…not many people can claim that they’ve done that before, so that was pretty cool! We walked over the Euphrates, I mean the Bosphorous, to the “new city” which is where our hotel was located. For whatever reason, Jeff called it the Euphrates…must’ve been the Efes (not Eles!) talking!
Day 3 – Tuesday May 25, 2010Today we went to 2 more business visits, Invest in Turkey and the Mediterranean Shipping Company.
Invest in Turkey is an organization that promotes Turkey as a place to do business. The organization is a government entity and reports up to the Prime Minister. Yet again, it was quite warm in the room where the presentation was held and to top it off, hot tea was served to us about 30 mins into the presentation. Not being a huge fan of tea, I did manage to drink it all, but I was sweating by the end of it because I was so hot! The presentation itself was ok, but it was a bunch of propaganda and was very “salesy”.
We broke for lunch and went to a nearby mall and ate at a food court. Several of us ended up at a small restaurant w/in the food court that served traditional Turkish food. Was quite odd actually. It was a sit down place with velvet chairs and all…in the middle of a food court. Needless to say the food was actually quite good, including more french fries!
After lunch, we were on our way to the Mediterranean Shipping Company. I fell asleep on the way to this visit and if it wasn’t for Killol waking me up, I would’ve probably missed the site visit! This was an interesting visit actually. The 1st presentation was by one of the managers of the company and the 2nd presentation was from one of the executive officers of the port. I thought it was an interesting dynamic with those two individuals doing presentations for us. The gentleman from MSC definitely seemed pretty nervous and watched what he said in front of the port executive.
Our last night in Istanbul was a good one. We ate at a place on the main strip, recommended by Meg’s guide book. Once again, had a traditional Turkish meal…all of which are blending in since it’s quite similar now.
After dinner, Meg, Jeff, Tom and I went out on a hunt to try to find a beer house called Balans. We finally found the street it was on but couldn’t find the actual beer house. Pretty funny though, after we sat down for about 30 mins, we looked across the way and there it was! Oh well, we stayed put at the other beer house that we ended up at. We sat at a table with tiny chairs and a small table, once again in another alley. This area definitely had a lot more locals than some of the other places we visited. We had several biraviras (beer towers) and just took in the local scenery and music. Jeff had quite a bathroom adventure when he was surrounded by 6 “Turkish Houligans”. After some small talk, Jeff said “I’ll kill you” and walked out. They obviously didn’t know what he was saying which was probably a good thing! The only other interesting thing from that night was a group of locals came over to our table and thought Tom was Bruce Willis and wanted to take a picture with him! Off to Budapest in the am…
Day 4 – Wednesday May 26, 2010
Travel day from Istanbul to Budapest. Left the hotel at 9am for a 12pm flight. After gaining an hour we finally arrived in Budapest and to the hotel around 2:30pm. I unpacked and walked around for about 45 minutes to get a bite to eat and get some cash, Hungarian Forint. Must’ve mis-calculated the exchange rate because I got $250 out instead of $50!
We hopped on the bus at 4pm for a cultural tour. 2 hour tour around the city, took us to Heroes Square and up to the Buda Hills for a great panoramic view of the city. Got back to the hotel around 6pm and showered up. Moses and Sturges met us up in our room, Moses brought up a smorgasbord of various beers. We each had a beer and were on our way to dinner.
We ended up at this traditional Hungarian place called Firkasz. This was a quaint little place with an awesome environment. A small bar as you enter the place, old hardwood floors, walls decorated with newspaper clippings, low ceilings and a piano player to top it all off! We all had an amazing meal. I had tenderloin brewed Hungarian style with onions and potatoes…it was fantastic. Accompanied by a couple of Sopori beers made it even better! A great dinner with some great laughs. Total damage was about 9000 Hungarian Forint which equates to about $45/person. Decided to get a nightcap at the Blue Tomato (the Blue “Mat” as Jeff calls it). More roaring laughter accompanied our time at the Blue Mat thanks to the adventurous bathroom visit and Jeff’s “Arnold” impersonation. And Mark starting a list of “people I want to punch in the face” on our trip…super funny stuff. Sturge came out to play that night but was unable to finish her beer so we knew it was time to call it quits. Awesome night!
Day 5 – Thursday May 27, 2010
We had 2 business visits today. We went to the U.S. Commercial Service and also visited BT Global.
The U.S. Commercial Service organization’s focus is to help companies prosper through global trade and ultimately helps firms in the U.S. export goods and services to Hungary. The presentation went well, although it was extremely hot in the room. A lady by the name of MaryAnne who works for the Dept of Commerce provided the group with an overview of the services that the USCS offers businesses. Learned that there are only 10 million people in Hungary, 3 million of those are actually in the workforce. Of those that are employable, only 54% actually work. It was evident from the presentation as well that Hungarians are known to be quite depressed; quite the contrary from our friends in Istanbul.
BT Global is the international arm of the telecom giant, British Telecom (BT). We visited the Shared Service Center which houses the employees who support BT’s back end support functions such as Finance, Accounting, Customer Service and Human Resources. Once again, it was extremely hot and uncomfortable in the room. Seems to be a common trend on this side of the world! Presentation was interesting as it relates to the business units that I currently support at the CollegeBoard, albeit BT’s units are much larger than CB. That being said though, not sure why we visited that site since it’s not revenue generating and doesn’t relate too much to the U.S. I guess the biggest takeaway was understanding the make-up of the organization, some relevant HR policies and gaining a locals perspective on some employment opportunities in Budapest.
We arrived back at the hotel around 5pm. Since we had to leave the hotel by 6:30am, I decided to take it easy and just go for a stroll around the city, a long stroll! I walked for probably 2-3 hours and just took it all in. Walked from the hotel to the Oktogon area, down to the Hungarian National Museum, and all over the Pest side of the city. A low key night was well needed!
Day 6 – Friday May 28, 2010We had 3 business visits today. We had visits with NCR, Baxter, and MS City Treuhand/Moore Stephens.
We departed the hotel at 6:30am for a 7:30am meeting at NCR. We met with the Quality Manager there who gave a brief overview of the operations. The room we had the overview in was unbearably hot. As for the overview, the company manufactures about 1200 ATMs in a week and about 120 for each shift. The manufacturing facility opened in Budapest in 2005. Our host gave us a tour of the factory which was pretty impressive. Interesting to see some of the things that we learned in our Ops Management class in practice.
We returned to our hotel where we were met with the General Manager of Baxter Hungary. He gave us an overview of Baxter as a whole and provided a briefing on general stats of Hungary as well. Not a very interesting presentation actually.
We broke for lunch around 11:45am. Mark, Meg, Jeff and I walked over to the Oktogon area where we ate at a place called Karma, a nice laid back open air café. I had grilled Duck over onions and potatoes…as usual it was excellent!
Headed back to the hotel for a nice power nap and then onto the last business visit of the trip. We visited with MS City Treuhand who is in the midst of a merger with Moore Stephens. The new firm will be called Moore Stephens Budapest and will have approximately 15-18 employees with revenues of about $1.2m. A small operation to say the least. The 2 partners gave us an overview of taxes in Hungary and Europe.
After the last business visit (finally!), we headed back to the hotel to get ready for our farewell dinner. The dinner was held at Spoon Restaurant and Café on the River Danube on the Pest side of the city. Another excellent meal…veal, potatoes, and mixed veggies along with some tasty Hungarian red wine. Then the fun started. After dinner we strolled the streets of Budapest and settled on a happenin bar in the middle of a town square. We had about 15 folks with us at this point and then decided to split from here and head towards the center square. We ended up at a grassy field, known as a celebration area for being poor. Apparently, there was a hole in the ground where a coliseum was started to be built, but they ran out of money. Now, the younger generations grab some beer at a local liquor store or grocery store and just come to this place to hang out. No music, no entertainment, just hanging out in the middle of the city. It was awesome! After this, one of Mark’s Hungarian friends led us to a night club and we danced the night away. Most definitely some good times. We ended up back at the hotel around 2:30am where we saw Scott and a few others. Scott, Jeff and I thought it would be a good idea to head back out to another night club and when we got there, they said there was a 10,000 forint cover charge (equivalent to $50 USD) and thank god we had enough sense to tell them to go scratch and headed back to the hotel for the night.
Day 7 – Saturday May 29, 2010
Somehow Jeff and I managed to stumble out of bed to breakfast around 8:56am, grab a quick bite to eat and then hopped on the bus for our cultural tour of the city. We were greeted on the elevator on the way to breakfast by none other than Angel, the Director of our MBA program. Of course he said we both looked a bit rough. Good thing he’s a great guy and totally understands. He’s all for having a great time, as long as we show up for the visits/tours…which we did!
Our tour guide took us over to the Buda side of the city to the funicular. We rode up the funicular and toured the sights from above. We visited the Fisherman’s Bastion which overlooks the city and the river Danube. We also visited an art museum on top of the hill. Some of us, myself included, passed on the art museum though. We walked around the little shops and I purchased some goods for the kids and just hung out and chatted out front of the museum. It was a beautiful day, bright blue skies, about 75 degrees. After the art museum we proceeded to lunch at a restaurant called 21 which was located in a tiny little village on top of the hill. Tender chicken breast with noodles…it was just ok.
After lunch, we went back to the hotel and crashed for about 2 hours…a well needed nap! After our naps, we went to eat in the Oktogon area again…at another small open air café across from the Moulin Rouge theatre. We then proceeded to an hour long cruise on the Danube. The cruise took us from the Elizabethan Bridge to Margarita Island and back. We each had 1 glass of champagne and 1 glass of beer on the cruise. We started this trip on a boat and ended the trip on a boat…not bad!
After the boat cruise, most folks went back to rest up for a long travel day, but Tom and I decided to go out for one last night. On the way though, we nearly got hit by a car. We both looked before crossing what we thought was a one way road and when we got to the middle of the road, we saw a car coming right at us at about 55 mph! The car locked its brakes and we both jumped back towards the sidewalk. Not fun, but luckily for us, we were safe.
So…we were on our way and went across the Elizabeth Bridge to a place called Donke (or something like that)…it was an open air nightclub just on the other side of the bridge and it was amazing! They only took cash (which is probably a good thing since we both were low). We got there around 10:30 and it was empty. By the time we left around 12:30, it was elbow to elbow packed and the scene was something else. Beautiful women and a beautiful night outside. I didn’t want to leave, but with a 20+ hour travel day the next day, we knew it was the right thing to do. Ready to go home and see my wife and kids, but definitely not looking forward to a long trek back home.
Day 8 – Sunday May 30, 2010
Woke up around 8am, packed, ate one last breakfast at the Hilton Budapest Westend and we were on our way. First flight left Budapest at 1pm (was delayed about an hour) for Munich. A very turbulent flight (I said a few prayers actually) then we landed in Munich and made a mad dash for our next flight. Once we got on the plane, then it was a long 9.5 hours from there!
All in all, a wonderful trip. Great memories, great laughs, a great experience. A new found respect for Budapest and a newly gained respect for Istanbul.
