Wedding Part 1 - Arrival

The best week of my life - including the best day of my life - has just ended. I have had some really tremendous previous best weeks and days of my life, but this wedding really blew them all away. Everything was just so . . . so . . . perfect.

Katie and I departed for Italy Tuesday, May 3, arriving Wednesday morning. I had contacted Continental customer service months ago to see if they would do anything special for a couple on its way to be married, hoping to surprise Katie with a shout-out or something similar. The generic "no" response I received was disappointing but wasn't a big deal. However, when the flight attendant saw Katie's hanging bag, she guessed at our impending nuptials and did make an announcement, which was a surprise and a lot of fun. She even called us Mr. and Mrs. Barrett, which may be closer to the mark than she intended! As always, Continental's good people came through, even when their systems and processes didn't.

We arrived in Rome, picked up Chris, Kelly, and Mike (Katie's father, sister, and sister's boyfriend - I usually try to anonymize other people in my blog entries but it just won't be possible in the ones about the wedding!), and set off for Castello di Montalto. Instead of heading straight to Castelnuovo Berardenga, though, we detoured through Montepulciano for some sightseeing and a late lunch. The weather was overcast but it already felt great to be re-immersed in the rolling green hills of bella Toscana!

Katie - now my co-author-for-life - insists that I elaborate a bit more on the food. At lunch many of us had Pici, the local handmade pasta (kind of like very fat spaghetti noodles) in various forms (mine with extra garlic naturally). To cleanse our palettes afterward, we walked back to our car with some fig and ricotta gelato that was out of this world!

When we arrived at the Castello late Wednesday afternoon, some of our guests had already checked in and the weather was already clearing up. For the rest of our stay, the weather remained perfect for castle life: sunny with highs in the low 20s C (low 70s F) and lows around 10 C (~50 F). We were greeted upon arrival by the Count and Countess (who reside in the main building of the castle) and by Leo, their noble German Shepherd, who demanded tummy rubs as hommage.

One of the villas in the hamlet - the one with a large balcony and a gorgeous view, naturally - quickly emerged as the "party suite." Most of our guests arrived Wednesday evening so we picked up 30 pizzas from a local pizzeria and served them up (along with plenty of vino!) in the party suite. This was a fantastic event as people from our various worlds began connecting. Family met coworkers, coworkers met friends, friends of one side met friends of the other side, etc. We only had ~40 guests all-in-all but all of the chapters of both of our lives were represented. We made merry until pretty late and then called it a night to deal with jet lag.

The energy brought by all of our guests was palpable and Katie and I knew that this was the beginning of a very special experience!

IMD Keeps On Giving

Last week was a very IMD-centric week for me. It began Monday night with dinner at a professor's house to discuss my next career move. After dinner and much discussion of Harry Potter with his children, we moved out to his terrace for dark chocolate, 1997 Castello Broglio Chianti Classico, and a marvelous sunset over the lake. While I distracted his dog with lots of petting, he played an excellent sounding board to my ideas and offered very helpful insights based on his experience and contacts.

Tuesday and Wednesday I met professors at IMD for coffee and again benefited from their very different perspectives. Also the IMD Info Center has helped me discover articles and papers to inform my decision process about next steps. Not wanting the benefit to flow only one way, though, I've been trying to give back to the IMD community as well and last week I met with three students interested in entrepreneurship to discuss some of the real issues encountered when starting up a business.

This weekend my Poken coworker, Bogdan, and I traveled to a few castles in the area. First on the list was Yverdon, which is a charming, sleepy little town with a modest castle in the center. Apparently the castle operated as a school for much of the 20th century--what an awesome place to have classes!

Next we moved up the road to Grandson, which boasts a much more sizable castle and was hosting a medieval festival that day. Although much smaller in scale than the renaissance fairs to which I am accustomed in the US, this one did have the advantage of location on real castle grounds. There was an artillery demonstration, archery competition, and duel between armored knights outside plus a museum of armor and weapons inside. The turrets (Yay!) offered breathtaking views of Lake Neuchatel and a pleasant feeling of dominance over the peasants below. :-) Here we bumped into Paul, the ping pong "ringer" from IMD who used to beat most of us last year--again the IMD network is ever present!

Unfortunately, though, there was no meat-on-a-stick to be found so we departed in the afternoon for Neuchatel. The castle there is very Swiss in style and provided some good exploring through its courtyards and along its parapets. The day was beautiful but almost chilly with the wind coming off the lake--what a change from August in Houston! I'll still never forget the 140-degree heat indexes of two-a-days in full pads at Rice Stadium . . .

Pics of all the castles are now in my facebook album.

As the day wore on we returned to Lausanne, but not without a pit stop in Renens for the European Sumo Championships!!!! We arrived just in time for the highest level of women followed by the highest level of men. Having never attended a sumo match before, this was quite a spectacle to me and it was interesting to see that a match consists of much more ritual than actual wrestling.

Bogdan and I bet on each of the matches and cheered loudly whenever someone much smaller beat an oversized opponent. They might as well have called it the Eastern European Sumo Championships, though, as it quickly became easy to predict the winners by country of origin: Georgia, Bulgaria, Russia, and Poland seemed unstoppable. The poor Swiss contenders never stood a chance.

Video of the men's final match is on facebook.

It was a fun day of local exploration and I'm glad I took advantage of Bogdan's offer to drive us around. It would have been all too easy just to stay at home and get work done but opportunities like this are fleeting before my imminent return to the States. Switzerland really is a beautiful country and I will miss it dearly--especially in the summer!

Heidelberg

Last week was pretty spectacular. Katie was in town for the week so it didn't need much to make it great to begin with. Still, the week "overperformed."

Katie arrived on Sunday and we spent the afternoon walking around the lake in the gorgeous weather. Lausanne in the summer really is paradise: highs in the 70s (F), lows in the 60s, and clear, sunny days. I had to ignore this fact purposefully last year while I was stuck in the IMD dungeons but this year I can take advantage.

Monday was a holiday so we played some beach volleyball and it was fun to play with my favorite coed 2s partner again! After a refreshing, cleansing dip in the lake, we and one of my coworkers went to a lakeside restaurant for nourishment and sangria--what a way to pass the afternoon!

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I worked but Friday too was a holiday so Katie and I left Thursday evening for Heidelberg, Germany, where her aunt lives. Heidelberg was great; although we only spent about 36 hours there, I found it to be really charming and certainly worth a return trip.

Heidelberg's most prominent attraction is its castle. As many of you know, I love castles, so I was very excited to check it out. We spent much of the day Friday just walking around the castle grounds, enjoying the lovely day, and scheming about ways to have a castle of our own!

In the evening we met up with Katie's aunt for dinner. We went to a local brewpub where I was delighted to discover that we were right in the middle of Germany's white asparagus season! Naturally we took advantage of this fact in each course and accompanied it with dark, dark German beer.

After dinner we paid a visit to Schwetzingen Castle, a much more modern palace than Heidelberger Schloss, but no less impressive. We arrived too late to walk the expansive grounds so we will just have to return some day.

Saturday we returned to Lausanne and attended an IMD MBA mini-reunion. Well technically it was supposed to be a networking event for the class of 2009. However, so many of my classmates were there that it was difficult to do much more than excitedly catch up with them. I'm not complaining!

Katie took off early on Sunday--far too soon--but it was a great week. Pictures are in my facebook album.

Barolo

As today is Sunday, all the wineries were closed and we were unable to book any appointments. All of the local enoteche, however, were open, so we took a leisurely drive around the Barolo valley, stopping every chance we had to taste Barolo, Barbaresco, Barbera, Dolcetto, and even Moscato.

Some of the views on our meandering drive were absolutely spectacular. We were particularly fond of La Morra, on the valley's northwest ridge. One of the aspects of Toscana I always loved was how its hills were a patchwork of different colors and textures. Here in Piemonte, every parcel is planted with vines so they have a more uniform color and texture. However, the color is a beautiful, rich green and the texture is a consistent, horizontal striation made by the rows of vines on steep slopes (Grapes are all harvested by hand here because machines couldn't handle the grade!), so there isn't much to complain about.

The enoteche in the castles of Barolo and Grinzane Cavour serve as the official tasting destinations for local varietals. What could be better than sipping on great wine in old castles with such beautiful vistas in all directions? La dolce vita.

We stopped in the city of Asti for dinner, settling on a restaurant with many local specialties on the menu, a nice wine list, and no English speaking staff. We weren't disappointed. Our waitress offered to select antipasti for us then we just chose first courses, thinking we would have a light meal. But oh were we wrong. The waitress brought plate after plate of antipasti so delicious would couldn't help but finish it. By the time my risotto with hazelnuts in a moscato cream sauce arrived, I could barely touch it. If that's the worst problem I have, though, life is good.

Pictures are in my facebook album.