It's a 5 hour ride, so we had plenty of time to talk and think. One thing that came to mind for me was a comparison to business. The voice over the loudspeaker on the train repeatedly said enjoy your journey in a very nice voice, and yet I found myself looking at a lot of graffiti. Don't get me wrong, graffiti isn't all bad, but it did seem to clearly contradict the culture they were trying to create on the train. I wonder if we do that in our orgs too, do we say enjoy the journey and yet everyone is looking at graffiti, wondering if we see it? Is it best to acknowledge the graffiti, or ignore it, or what?
We jumped off the train in Venice, it was pouring rain so we decided to eat right next to the station. It was kinda funny that we ate at a hotel restaurant in the same chain of hotels that we were staying in just 15 minutes up the road. The nice folks at this hotel said it was a quick easy bus ride to the other one, so I went on a mission to find tickets while the girls ate.
The first ticket machine I found had a Windows 2000 error on it. I eventually found a coffee shop that sold tickets and we were all set. It took a few minutes to know exactly which bus to catch, but we caught it. Then we sat there, waiting for the bus to move. It quickly became apparent that the bus driver was in a verbal argument with someone outside the bus, especially when the guy outside the bus slammed his fist into the window. Great, I got to put on my protective "hat" again and make some quick decisions.
After checking it all out, it was safe and easy to just wait on the bus while the police came. The verbal disagreement was in Italian, so we couldn't quite understand, but it appeared as though the car driver thought the bus was blocking his way out. Just that simple. It took 30 minutes for the police and next bus to come, but we safely arrived at our hotel and got some good sleep :)
No comments:
Post a Comment