With Ian Hancock, IBM Tivoli Storage specialist who is not John Hancock. John Hancock is a phrase used for signature.We were waiting to be seated and had a couple of beers.Kamenitza is the local beer. Good.All of a sudden the waiting girls started dancing.Menus are full of selection. Salad galore. Salad-o-rama. My kind of place. Tropicana Salad and Cheese bits in bread. Nice place. And waaay cheap. Drinks and food for two = 10 EUR ???
With a freek, ex-colleauge Marek Swierad. A friend. And another friend in crisis. Identity. Identity Manager. Just wanted a drink. Got an apetizer. Classy place. Not a lot of people. Monday evening. Strange evening. People changing. Was nice anyway.
A very, very nice restaurant. Posh. And they put gold on the food. Yes, gold. Real golden leaves. And you eat this. David Baugh did not.
The dinner wa very good, but the whole evening was still under the influence of the events, that took place in the airplane flight from Ljubljana to Zurich. The seat next to me was empty. But not entirely. The Grim Reaper was sitting silently there. In the middle of the flight the young girl passanger passanger in the seat in front of me would be touched by death. She would start having really big troubles with breathing. Both stewards were trying to help here with little effect. She was given additional oxygen. She fainted. They laid her down and sprayed with water. the whole plane was counting minutes to landing. They very desperately trying to keep here alive. I moved to the back row. Immediately after landing the ambulance crew would board the plane and take the girl. Presumably still alive. We were all shocked. Imagine: one day you board a plane, take off alive and land dead. In the evening I met Alex Wahl, Tivoli Channel Manger EMEA and we had a beer. And a greek salad. Long live ...
(Dušan) Dusan Spalevic (Spalević) was very kind and picked me up in front of IBM Russian Federation. We discussed about cultural difference between Russians and all other people all the way in the car and also at home through the evening. I have also been introduced to Mark and Victoria (I hope I remembered the name right - sorry Dule). Dinner was Serbian - pasulj and sopska - since they have a Serbian restaurant in the same building. Very tasty. Served with good portions of vodka. What else ...
Swarm intelligence. That's what you could call the movements in the overcrowded halls of Moscow underground train. Amazing. On the way to Kebab City my Nokia 9500 would break. The joints of the cover are broken. 50 EUR repair - back in Slovenia. Kebab City is nothing really special, but since it is in the very centre of Moscow, they can charge 50 USD per person for some grilled meat and beers. Our Ukrainian partners (Igor Sichkar and others from SIS) were celebrating their Award they received. Weather deteriorated and it was really freezing. Moscow at its best.
Meeting with Martin Wirtz from Studio Moderna. He likes port. The wine. Particular De la force:
With Andrej Steklasa from CMT. The menus are pretty hefty. I doubt that any of, otherwise very nice and cosy place, managed to read the whole story in the begining of the menu. The ratio between female and male visitors at the point of our penetration to the place was 8 to 1. Amazing! Immediately after our arrival it changed significantly. The variety of the dishes was. due to late hours, severely cut down. We opted for soup'n'salad. How chick like aint'it? They serve Cactus drink. People speak Slovenian. Tables are reserved. Toilets are ... are. Orange language courses. Product, placement, price, promotion. www.orange-slo.com Soup arrived. It's good, but I have difficulties eating this days. New teeth. All 6 in front. He pretended to enjoy chilli con carne. Right hand tortilla, left hand toilet. Salad looked deee-lecious. We were served some leftovers from Valentines - green hearts. Eating green salad with only 6 front teeth is ... requires skills. One can master it to perfection. Thank you for the dinner, Borut. 
A very nice drinking pub. In the summer they open it up and it is three times the size it is in winter. And, yes, there is place nearby called Bolek. The world (or at least Europe) famous Polish cartoon Lolek and Bolek. Open fire, warm and cosy. Live music. The singer was surprised I was taking pictures of the elephant on the wall and not of her and the band. I corrected the mistake. David and I continued with our Zywiec and to justify the existence of this particular Blog post, we had to order some pistacio and peanuts. The singer had a sister and a friend supporting her. At the same table as David and myself were sitting. And as David predicted they soon started talking to us. That's what the Polish girls are like. Pretty open. They were supposedly drawn by our hard, German like language. That's what Poles are thinking of our, Slovenian language. Hard and German like. Anyway, it was nice. The place was not crowded, though it is quite popular. And he would not let me pay this time either. Early morning flight the next day made us leave early. Multilingual. Lolek rules.
My last day in Warsaw. I had a plan to meet with my post-graduate schoolfriend from University of Ljubljana. David Bratoz (Bratož) is now working in Warsaw for a Slovenian pharmaceutical company Krka. Running the ever increasing sales here. The discussion is running about running that we do in sales. Day in, day out. He was also unable to spend last year's vacation. Coming directly from 35+ Rio to snowy Warsaw has finnaly gotten to me. I cought a mild cold and therefore I ordered the spiciest pizza - Volcano. Though the place Na Provincije itself did not help very much. Their ceiling ventilators were running at full speed - who knows why they do that in the middle of the winter? My Polish is starting to run and so is my Volcano pizza as I add substantial amount of Tabasco. The first round of Zywiec is also starting to run. Things are running here in Poland. Big market, high growth, a lot of competition. David insisted on covering the bill and offered me opportunity to cover it at the next beer drinking place - Lolek where we were running next. And if you want an express historical walkaround in Warsaw old town - David is a very good choice for that. Sales cycles in pharma are way shorter than in IT Middleware market. A lot more running. And boy was Warsaw ruined during WW II.
