Meeting in the mountains

The first thing, well maybe the second, when I check into a hotel on a work trip, is connecting to the WiFi and smiling that it actually works without having to rig my laptop, power supply, firewall, DNS settings and finally calling the ''IT'' in the hotel (which is usually a waiter who has studied networks at some point in his life). So coming back to the first thing I look for, it is a nice comfortable bed. Since both these requirements were amply satisfied at Hotel Kitzhof (shown in the photo - click on it for a better view) in Kitzbühel, my day got off to a good start and made up for my red eyes from waking up at an ungodly hour and traveling in the same.

Kitzbühel is located in the state of Tyrol in Austria and is very famous for both hiking and skiing because of the landscape. I was pleasantly surprised by how uncrowded it was and then it dawned on me that September was not high season. The conference room had a spectacular view and it took me a while to look away from it and concentrate on what was happening. After hours of meeting, an extremely delicious lunch (as a really picky vegetarian, when I say delicious, you should take my word for it !), a few more hours of meeting and several cups of coffee, we got ready for our team activity – hiking (our starting point was this beautiful restaurant next to the hotel - see photo)! I was thinking that hiking after a long work day was going to be a bad idea since the team comprises people who run marathons, people like me in the middle and people who hardly take any exercise.

The weather was extremely kind to us and it remained 16 deg C all along – neither too hot nor too cold for a brisk walk up the mountains. The scenery was stunning and the conversations – both business and private were interesting and I was totally shocked when we stopped for a drink and I realized that we had hiked for nearly 3 hours! Well, I thought my husband was right when he said that I might actually run a marathon if I had someone alongside running and talking with me all the time :D ! By the time we had dinner, everyone was starving and did apt justice to the efforts of the Chef - absolutely no leftovers.

One of the exercises I found extremely interesting was taking a few minutes to think about the question "what would I do to make my company bankrupt ?!''. At the end of the session we had a long list of suggestions and making sure that we were doing exactly the opposite as we went over the suggestions was surprisingly a morale boosting exercise - the positive power of negative thinking.

I was moderating the second day of the meeting that comprised mostly of brainstorming sessions. What I found extremely tricky was interrupting someone to give a chance to another, without breaking the flow of the brainstorming or the thoughts of the individual. In order to make the session successful, one also has to capture all the issues, concerns and more importantly the ideas and solutions to solve them and end the session by coming up with a list of action items. Thanks to some management lectures I took (although I hated attending them during my degree), I like to stick to SMART objectives - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. So instead of creating an objective of being customer oriented, one should have an objective that reads ''Support 2 customers in simplifying their solution using efficient user interface implementation by Q4 2009''.

Standing, talking, listening, concentrating and making notes for hours finally paid off when we concluded the day with a good list of action items all with deadlines and assigned to specific persons, with a request for periodic updates. No wonder I slept for 12 hours the night after the meeting was over !

Coming back to Kitzhof and Kitzbühel, it was too short a time and too tight a schedule to enjoy both the hospitable hotel and the picturesque place. Hmm....well... for all I know, I might go back to the same place in winter for a skiing trip....fingers crossed......

A pinch of Salt

well...actually the title is a gross underestimation since I am going to talk about a place that has produced 70,000 tonnes of salt and can still produce salt for another 1000 years - the salt mines of Bad Dürrnberg, a few km away from Salzburg, Austria.

If you are ever in Salzburg and have an extra day, do not miss the Salt mines and why ?

- If you have never been in a mine, this can make the best first impression (like it did with me)

- The ride through the mines on what is called a pit railway (a motorized long cart that can take you into the mines and spare you the 5km walk !) gets you more excited than when you get to wear the white protective overalls before entering the mine. The warnings about the dos and donts gets your heart racing (you think if there is a warning, then there IS a risk :D !). Dark tunnels that seem never ending make you wonder about how miners worked in olden days

- The tour of the mines is made interesting with lectures from a multi-lingual guide and ours had a sense of humour and to add to it, you have interesting videos (not the national geographic kind but the story telling kind) to learn about the history of the mines

- You get to cross over the border into Germany without a passport, obviously while still being underground

- The best part: you get to slide down wooden chutes that are about 50-100 m long to go to different levels (exactly like miners did) and that too twice ! You would be amazed at the acceleration and I am talking about literally sliding (this is when you are thankful you put on the white overalls) !!

- Finally, you take a raft ride on a salt lake with music and lights that highlight the different kinds of salt formations.

- Once you come out of the mine, you can complete your day with a tour of the Celtic village (Celts settled in this area nearly 2500 years ago)

Some interesting facts:

- Salary is derived from the roman word salarium which was more or less the pay given to soldiers for buying salt or ''sal'' (coined from the fact that salt was a mode of payment in those days)

- Italian architecture: Prince Wolf Dietrich built numerous buildings and castles in Salzburg all based on Italian architecture that many times you stop to wonder if you are in Austria or Italy. Residenz platz, Schloss (Castle) Mirabell are a few of the examples.

- Crash course on salt mine formation:

continents drift -> ocean water trapped between land masses -> eventually trapped water evaporates leaving salt behind -> over years, geological layers form over the salt layer -> result is a salt mine within a mountain !

I have been in Salzburg in winter but visiting it in summer was a completely different experience. The water fountain in the Residenzplatz and the flowers in Mirabell garden were a summer treat. The stunning view from the top of the Fortress of Hohensalzburg was worth the climb and I couldn't help but compare the picture to the snowy white sheet and fairytale-like-view I had enjoyed last november.

All around the city, I noticed people getting ready, women in their traditional Drindl and men in their leather suspenders for open-air Mozart concerts...after all he was born in Salzburg. As I saw the concert stages being built and the instruments being lined up, my mind was once again looking at pictures of christmas market in these same places and I realised every season makes the city beautiful in its own way.

I finally boarded my train back to Munich with the satisfied feeling that it was a weekend well spent.....!

To Gschnitz and then Bolzano....

No..no...neither am I having a bout of flu nor am I swearing....Gschnitz (I dare you to try saying ''Gsch'' without laughing !) is a small town in Austria, close to Innsbruck and before going there, I did not know it existed too :)

It all started on a fine friday morning when one of my American colleagues (lets call her K), who was here for the 6th time and still had not managed to see anything except our offices in Europe, resolved to herself that she is spending saturday in a different country before catching her return flight to the US on sunday. So what next ?

at 12:30: K decides she wants to drive to Trento in Italy and decides to break her journey in Austria
at 13:30: She comes to me with a plan and asks me if I want to come with her. Ofcourse I said yes (when have I ever said no to ooru suthifying ?)
at 15:00: She gets a rental car with a tom tom and reserves a hotel in Gschnitz since thats the cheapest option
at 17:30: I go home and pack a rucksack
at 18:00: We are on the road driving from Munich.....and then it gets interesting !
at 18:30: We are heading north of Munich while Austria is in the south. Since we chose a route with no toll roads (basically the cross country auto-bahn stretch since with our small car, a VW polo, we can definitely not go at speeds worthy of the auto-bahn where the minimum recommended speed in most cases is 130 Kmph) we assumed it was a round-about way.
at 19:00: We are still driving north and directions point to Munich airport. I get suspicious and query the tom tom again only to realise it is indeed taking us to the airport (which was probably the last used destination) since it did not recognise Gschnitz !!
at 19:01: We reset everything so that it atleast points to Innsbruck and begin driving south...phew !
at 21:00: We arrive in Innsbruck and learn that Gschnitz is not far off only wondering why our hotel reservation simply gives the name of the hotel and Gschnitz without any address or street name
at 21:30: We arrive in Gschnitz (atleast according to the name board on the side of the road!). Although we are impressed with the beautiful small houses, we still do not know how to find the hotel. So we pull up infront of a fire station, the only place open, and ask for directions. Although I know German, I hardly understand what he is saying (since he is speaking the austrian version !) but I pick up a few key words to know that we simply drive straight ahead.

at 21:40: We arrive at the hotel. There is no way we could have missed it since it was the tallest building in that town (had 3 floors) and we also realise that Gschnitz has only one street and hence no street name or address in the reservation ! While we were wondering how to get in since the whole town seemed asleep, we notice an envelope sticking out from behind the hotel door handle with our names on the outside and keys on the inside...Voila !

Neat, comfortable rooms, nice beds => slept soundly !

K wakes me up in the morning saying ''you should see this'' and waking up at 8 on a vacation is beyond difficult for me but finally I gave in. We go to the balcony and this is the scene that greets our eyes - sheep with bells around their necks (the bell sound is what awoke K) grazing and its green as far as you can see with mountains, whose caps are covered with snow and fog, behind....is sure a great way to wake up !

After a good breakfast of bread, homemade jam, farm fresh butter, we headed out for a small hike - saw a quaint little church, a small village with all the age old machinery to grind corn and make flour well preserved and finally a beautiful waterfalls (hiked to the top to get a better view). Words cannot describe how beautiful the place was, imagine the best calendar pics of mountains and greenery you have seen ! We then found a restaurant and I ordered a salad and what I got blew my mind - boiling hot plate of 2 kinds of fresh beans, corn with yoghurt sauce and sitting among these was an oven-baked farm potato wrapped in an aluminum foil like a chocolate...yum....best salad i have had in Europe so far !!


After lunch we decided it was time to head to Trento and since we had no other choice we put our trust in the tom tom again and again chose the ''no toll roads'' option.
at 14:00: We are driving to Italy from Gschnitz
at 14:30: We are climbing a mountain and wondering how Trento could on a mountain...and yeah, obviously you cannot turn back on such a mountain road
at 15:00: altitude 1000m
at 15:15: altitude 1500m
at 15:40: altitude 2200m and we finally arrive at what looks like a ski resort still wondering where the heck Trento could be ! Well, actually, we wondered much later since there were more beautiful views from that altitude and after enjoying it to our heart's content we were relieved to see the road going downhill on the other side
at 16:25: We are finally almost at the foot of the mountain and just when we were thinking that we might see Trento we go through a really long tunnel and then follows 22 other tunnels !!
at 16:55: After all the ''tunneling'', we see a sign that says Trento is 55 km away. At that moment we decided we were not going to drive any further instead we would explore the place we were in - Bolzano !

Bolzano looked like a perfect german-italian town, obvious from its location close to the border. Not only did all signs read something like ''Banco/Bank'', the city centre looked very ''german'' too while the shopping area and the cafeterias made it obviously italian ! After spending some time at the Duomo (Cathedral), we walked into the shopping area only to come across the veteran car team - a group of old veterans with their 1923-30 model cars....and whats more we even saw them driving those cars - I really couldn't have believed that those cars would run !!


After a typical cappuccino in a typical Italian Cafe, we were ready to head back home and we were home after 4.5 hrs of driving and this time we ''cleverly'' avoided the mountains :)

Moral(s) of the story
- It pays to be cheap (:D) or rather economic - we never would have seen those breathtaking views if we had not tried to save money on a city hotel or toll roads!
- Tom tom shows you the route most of the times but not necessarily the shortest or the fastest !
- When you are on vacation, do not have a strict agenda, go where the tom tom takes you to have the maximum fun :D !

To conclude, one of the most beautiful places I have seen and one of the best road trips I have had.....