I just spent five very extraordinary days in Florence, Italy. Canonbury Group organized a two-day round table meeting about strategic security and geopolitical issues at Villa La Pietra, a conference and events center owned by New York University. I took care of the practical arrangements for the meeting including, for example, travel schedules, airport transfers, hotel reservations, spouses’ program, ordering notebooks, going through menus, reviewing cost estimates... So the past month has surely been very hectic but I have to say I really enjoy this all: doing real things for real people instead of working for a faceless corporation, receiving daily feedback instead of a distant development discussion once a year, meeting wonderful people and constantly learning something new.
I flew to Florence last Wednesday, October 3rd, and found my way to La Pietra – I actually had a driver at the airport waiting for me with a sign – luxury, isn’t it… Wednesday afternoon I spent going through our participants’ bios and photos and getting them saved on memory sticks, which is a great idea: instead of giving each and everyone a pile of printouts you give them a memory stick which they can reuse later.
Wednesday evening we had an informal dinner at Paoli’s, a lovely Tuscan restaurant with beautiful frescos on the ceiling. There were 16 people attending (most participants weren’t arriving until later that night) including, for example, the most charismatic Indian ambassador and his wife with whom I had an interesting discussion about family values in India. Of course we talked a lot about Italian food as well: I hadn’t been to Italy before but Italian food has always been one of my favourites so I’m happy this ended up being a very culinary trip as well.
Thursday and Friday were the days of the actual conference, starting at 9 am and ending around midnight. As my role was to make sure everything goes as planned, I could not doze during the sessions – like one speaker who, after having his presentation on Thursday morning, slept through the rest of the conference.
The speakers and participants represented a wide variety of organizations, cultures, nationalities and religions. For example, there was a Scottish professor who is vegetarian (think about all the Angus beef in Scotland!); a British MP – they say he is a potential next Prime Minister of GB – a very politician’s stereotype who gave a 45-minute speech without saying much and who, when I asked him what he thinks about Finland’s role regarding Russia, told me that Finland indeed does have a long border with Russia and that - fluently changing the subject - he actually went to Finland some years ago and met the former director of Bank of Finland, Sirkka Hämäläinen. - Then there was a Brasilian commodities specialist who was very aware of the volume of Finnish pulp and paper industry and investments in Latin America. And there was an American Government advisor whose presentation about near future scenarios and threats, for example, nuclear weapons and genetically modified diseases was exceptionally thought-provoking.
Both nights we had a wonderful 4-course dinner preceded by cocktails in the gardens. Friday night’s dinner was a formal black tie one and before that we had a guided - and not only guided, but there was a guard with a gun as well following our group - tour of the 13th century art collection at Villa La Pietra. The dinner itself was held in a hall called La Limonaia and literally, the tables were decorated with real lemons (which ended up costing us more than a thousand euros…). Outside the building there was a lemon garden with man-sized lemon trees planted in huge pots. The guide told us that the lemon trees will be moved indoors for winter-time as they would not survive the cold nights.
On Saturday my bosses invited me for lunch and we spent nice two hours sitting outdoors on Piazza Santa Croze having an informal wrap-up of the meeting and enjoying some anti pastos and vitello tonnato. And the best: I will get to take care of the next conference as well which I’m very excited about!! It just may be a ‘little’ more challenging: it will be in the Sultanate of Oman most likely in October, 2008.
On Saturday afternoon I finally had time to walk around Florence and try to find something to take home. Olive oil, Chianti and some durum wheat flour definitely. Candies for Roosa, Frans, Saaga and Little Ruu. And a whole 5-kilo Parma ham costing only 35€! (I think it will take us until Christmas to get finished with that…) - On Sunday I flew back home via Paris and had to hang around at the airport almost 5 hours waiting for my flight to Dublin, which was probably the most tiring part of the trip. There is not much at Charles de Gaulle and everything is very expensive (would you pay 7€ for a pint of Heineken!?). - Yesterday I had a day off and sure needed that. Now it’s again back to normal – and also back to the original topic ‘Family Rosti in Ireland’ instead of ‘Mom Rosti in Tuscany’.
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