Ryan Goes to the Cote d’Azure (Part II)

My flight was scheduled to arrive in Nice at 9:40am local time. We actually beat that time by 5 minutes. Planes take an unusual flight pattern to land at the airport in Nice. Basically, just a minute or so before the plane touches down it makes a 90 degree turn to align itself with the runway. My hypothesis for this is noise control over Nice (because otherwise the plane would be flying over the city), but I don’t know for sure.

My 6km taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was 33 euro. A bit more expensive per kilometer than Bulgaria … or anywhere I’ve ever traveled. Before our retreat we were given a packet saying the taxi ride would probably cost about 30 euro so I was prepared. Luckily I could expense it.

The retreat officially started with a cocktail hour and dinner starting at 7pm so I had plenty of time to kill. I killed it by sleeping. I checked around 11am and took a nap until mid-afternoon. I then went up to the roof (where they had a pool, deck chairs and a bar) and took another nap until I woke up for dinner. I don’t sleep very well on planes – probably because I’m 6’1″ and always riding in coach. Plus, on international flights they keep coming by with drinks, food, drinks again, more food, water and coffee, dessert, etc. You can’t go more than an hour without someone trying to offer you something to eat or drink. It’s the opposite extreme from domestic flights where 2-3 people a year probably die of starvation from some NYC to LA flight that gets delayed for 6 hours on the tarmac.

At 7pm I went down to dinner and mingled with some of my coworkers. I had met some of them in December when I was traveling around to different projects, but the retreat included our Russian projects and I had only met one of those guys. The retreat also included spouses – of which I have none (still dodging that bullet), but I was able to meet everyone else’s. I’d guess there were about 40 of us total on the retreat.

Bright and early Thursday morning we woke up to get our picture taken while looking directly into the sun. I could only keep one eye open and have a very pronounced squint in the picture.

Next was a walking tour of Nice by a local guide. We got to see the old town, the hilltop ruins above the old town and a small palace of a former wealthy Niçoise family.

Later that afternoon we had a wine tasting at “the oldest wine cellar in Nice.” It was good. I still don’t know why they had a Maryland license plate among the cellar decorations, but the wine was quite good. I don’t remember what we were drinking as French wines are a complete mystery to me. Rather than label the wines with the grape as many other countries do, the French like to distinguish their wines by region, town, village, house, bathroom, floor tile and any other diminutive designation to make it as hard as possible for the layman to know what he/she is drinking. That’s why the French have over 230,000 different wineries. Marketer’s hell is where they are told they have to market French wine to the relatively uneducated (in wine, that is) Americans.

For dinner we split our large group up into several smaller groups so we would be able to have some more intimate discussions and get to know each other better. Our companies’ consultants are spread all over the world so these retreats are really the only way to keep our “corporate culture.” Our group was assigned (we drew out of a hat) to dinner at a very nice seafood restaurant. It would have been good if I liked seafood. It would have been better if the partner’s wife liked seafood. As it was, neither of us liked seafood. Luckily, one of my Russian coworkers would eat anything – and a lot of it, so he made up for our disinterest in the bowls full of snails, crabs and squishy things. The menu did contain one beef dish – labeled as “Piece of Beef.” Most interesting indeed. I wonder what part of the cow is used to make the “Piece of Beef.” I asked.

“What kind of beef is used in Piece of Beef?”

A: (in a French accent) “Piece of Beef.”

There you have it. A piece of beef is used in the Piece of Beef dish. It was too tempting to not order it. As it turns out, Piece of Beef is actually several small strips of quite raw, very fatty, and very plain (unseasoned) beef. Outback Steakhouse would go out of business tomorrow if they served this beef.

On Friday we all got together in a conference room at the hotel for some corporate presentations. One of our partners, concerned about the fire escape procedures, wanted to make sure everyone knew where the fire exit was. He wasn’t sure so he called in one of the hotel staff. The conversation went something like this.

“Can you show us the escape procedure in case of a fire?”

“No.”

“No? How do we get out of the hotel in case of a fire?”

“I will come and get you.”

There you have it. “I will come and get you.” Why even bother having exit signs? I’ll tell you how this story would end up. A fire would start at the main entrance – probably started by an American pissed off that they paid 300 euro – that’s $408 – for a room that didn’t have their American-hotel-standard ultra thick pillow-top mattress topped with 97 pillows of different fluffiness. Upon seeing the fire, the conference room attendant and his minimum wage salary would be hauling ass the other direction – any promises made to “come get someone” would be long forgotten. So, our partner took it on himself to find an alternate exit to the front door. He finally found one and we all did a test exit. The building we were in was split into two separate hotels. The only way out of the Le Meridian was to go down a back stairway, through a construction area somewhere in the middle of the building, through the other hotel’s lunch room, and out through the lobby of the other hotel. We got some very odd looks from the other hotel’s staff watching 25 or so people wander through their hotel.

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