Tutto bene!

Here we are, Stefano and I on the way back from Milano to Lausanne. We were lucky to get onboard one of the new fancy trains with airplane seats, power plugs and a restaurant that serves fresh-brewed coffee. It makes life so wonderfully comfortable.

We have been in Milano to talk to Father Kizito - founder of the Koinonia organization - and to the Amani organization - the primary source of funding for Koinonia . We felt that it was important that they also knew about the things both we and Koinonia had been through, so they can provide Koinonia with the optimal support. Our message was well received and we now only need to debrief with the MBA2008 class to bring the project to an end. That meeting is planned for Friday.

Stefano is from Milano, so we stayed with his parents while there. Here it is from left Fratello Stefano, Sorella Marta, Papá Fabrizio, Mamma Marina and one of their guest for the day. Gerald Lo was also there, but is unfortunately not captured here. We really enjoyed the hospitality of the family and the excellent cooking of Mamma Marina. It was a piece of Italy, like taken out of a movie.

The Giussani family lives in a charming high-ceiling apartment in central Milano. Stefano is the 4^th consecutive generation engineer in the family and surprised us by showing his hidden talent on the family’s piano!

It was also quite an experience for a northerner like myself to experience another of Stefano’s talents: Some real Italian driving in Milan rush-hour traffic! I know now why the Italians produce such great race cars: It is in their blood!

Ciao!

Thorsten

A picture from Kenya on Friday after we had our last workshop. These are the people from Koinonia and IMD that formed the core team during the project.

Ruslana and Eva under a beautiful purple-flowered tree at the Karen Blixen house just outside Nairobi.

Exhaustion and Excitement

I am back in the train to Milano. As we pass the border to Italy the steward in the train always comes around with the cart with food and drinks. I bought a cup of coffee and a sandwich and found it a bit amusing that alone the process of paying for it was done in three of the four official Swiss languages: German, French and Italian:


Steward: Das is zehn frank sechzig, bitte.
Thorsten (handing over the money): Bitte sehr
Steward: Merci
Thorsten: Merci
Steward (with a smile): Ciao
Thorsten: Ciao

I don’t speak Italian nor French, but as you can see you get far with ‘Merci’ and ‘Ciao’, particularly in a cosmopolitan community like the Swiss.

I will be spending the night in a hotel in Milano with my girlfriend who is coming up from Genoa. Tomorrow morning early we get on the plane to Amsterdam and then on another one to Bremen. Here we take a rented car to southern Denmark to attend the wedding of a friend of mine. After the wedding we drive back south across the German border to a hotel in Flensburg. After a few hours of sleep we drive to Hamburg, where my girlfriend takes a flight to Barcelona and I get on a flight to Istanbul. My girlfriend and I have come to the point now, where we are just happy whenever we can get a few hours together in an airplane or in a car. Sleeping together is complete luxury even if it only is for a few hours at the time.

In Istanbul Airport I meet the rest of my ICP team, who has flown in from Geneva, and we fly to Nairobi to start the work with the Koinonia organisation there. After Nairobi I go straight to Hong Kong and later Singapore on my own to talk with some people there. So all in all this is the start of a three-week journey, a journey that I somehow feel will mark the opening of a new chapter in my life.

As you can probably sense, this IMD life is constantly throwing me back and forth between feelings of exhaustion and excitement. There are times (usually when I haven’t had a full night’s sleep for weeks) where I just dream about a normal life, sleeping in on Saturday morning, making a REAL breakfast and a good cup of coffee, taking time to read the newspaper or perhaps go for a run or a game of football. Like normal people do, you know. At the same time I don’t want this constant stream of new input, impressions and learning to end. It is like a drug that makes me high and makes it easier to work through the nights.

I already know now that I will miss it when it is gone!