- one turbo-prop flight!
- two turbo-prop flights!
- three turbo-prop flights!
- four turbo-prop flights!
Four turboprop flights to, from and within Transylvania…ah ah ah!
So, I’m back from my business trip to Timişoara and Iaşi, Romania. I suggest you follow those links (to the cities’ respective Wikipedia entries) — there is some neat trivia there.
It was a very interesting trip — my first to Eastern Europe (outside of Prague, Czech Republic) and my first business trip to one of my company’s “low-cost countries.” My goal was to select some candidates that HR in the region had identified to help me (and other members of my department) with administrative daily work that has been bogging down our creative processes. I hope that it was not in vain, but I won’t know for a couple days probably whether the interviewees will accept our job offers.
Iaşi’s Cultural Palace — thanks, Wikipedia!
Unfortunately, our schedule and the weather together really didn’t give me much chance to snap any pictures. So the best I could do were these shots from my seat on the plane on the flight back to Munich from Timişoara. Iaşi struck me as slightly more charming than Timişoara, probably owing to its hilly landscape and less-industrial / more-artsy architecture. It was, however, still very easy to point out which buildings were constructed during Romania’s communist era and which had predated it. Gray concrete columns juxtaposed with ornate pointy steeples does give the place a surreal touch.
I am sure that I will have to visit Iaşi again sometime in the foreseeable future; I am glad that I got the chance to check it out this time. Next time, I am sure I will be doing more work and having seen the airports (tiny!) and lived through taxi trips (harrowing!) already will certainly be a benefit.
Well, my Romanian student took the time to write down some of his favorite dishes to eat when he goes home, so next time you are going, I will send you the list. Written in Romanian, of course, but he did add some English words when he knew what the foods were. He was very disappointed to learn that you were already on your way home by the time he gave me the list!
That will come in handy for sure. Since the trip was a success, and we are in the process of hiring two of the interviewees, sooner or later (probably sooner) I will be back in Iași to train them.