Nearly time to head home for Christmas and New Year to celebrate in true Geordie style and no doubt tell one or two stories about the two audits I've just been on.
First up, we had the Central Europe adventure which took in the sights of Budapest, Belgrade, Prague and Bratislava, or the airports, offices and hotels at least. It was a tough but very interesting 2 & 1/2 weeks, with 7 flights in 6 days!!! We were taken on market visits in each country, which gave us a useful insight into shopping habits in former communist countries. We were treated to traditional Hungarian food - lots of fish- and drink, Unicum and Palika shots which, of course, we had to drink to be polite! I stayed in Budapest for the weekend, and so went to the magical Moulin Rouge club in the city centre, which boasts fire-eaters, a magician and dancers. The team in the Czech Republic gave us "meat with meat" and artery clogging fat on bread all washed down with Schlivovich - again they made us try it! In Belgrade we were chauffeured in a traditional yugo car - certainly an experience to remember, and later we wandered through the city centre and saw beautiful buildings destroyed by conflicts in the past. Finally in Bratislava we ate "Soup in Bread" which is literally bread with soup inside of it!!
Then after a couple of weeks back in the UK, it was off to Istanbul to do the first 3 week unit audit - a comprehensive audit of the full business, and not just the financial controls as we used to do. There was a lot to take in - we were looking at about 20 different topics, ranging from accuracy of revenue, to domestic route to market, to how the transition from a family owned company to a multinational had been handled. In the first week we had back to back meetings with the country leadership team to try and get an understanding how everything worked. In the second week we did two site visits - 1 of which was to the holiday resort of Izmir. Whilst there, in a restaurant having dinner, our host quickly whispered to us that a famous couple had just entered one of whom had dreamt of going out with the other when younger. No, unfortunately it was not Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, but the most famous actress in Turkey and her younger boyfriend, sadly both unknown to us foreigners!
In the final week, we worked hard to complete our testing and pull together our recommendations for the end of audit meeting while somehow still finding time to perfect our Turkish (I found no end of eager teachers at the hotel - it's always worthwhile being nice and polite to the hotel staff, especially when you are there for a couple of weeks), and decide which mezze was our absolute favourite - Turkish food is without a doubt the best I've had so far.
After 2 audits, I can now tell you though that audit is not quite as glamorous as people think - it's impossible to glide through airports as effortlessly as Victoria Beckham does with 3 weeks of clothes (in a distinctly non-designer suitcase) AND hand luggage AND a laptop but WITHOUT her entourage to help. It's also very difficult to look chic and be cheery for your pickup at 7am when you only arrived at the hotel 5 hours earlier. And although packing is quite fun when going on holiday, it's not fun to be unpacking for the 4th time in 1 week! That said, audit does provide some brilliant experiences and give you some great skills and interesting stamps in your passport!
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