Viennese Waltz

Added 27.03.2023 after watching a lovely VLOG of Electric Car trip to Vienna from Cologne.
 
My first boss in Germany, who made me redundant 17 days after I started, had gone out to also be relocated to the companies subsidiary Burger King in Florida, then he left them. did a stint at Disney Corporation heading their finance in Europe and now was CFO of Austria's largest company OMV (in 2021 413th largest public company in the world), a petrochemical business with links mainly to Eastern Europe and Russia. David and I had always been befriended outside of work and over the years kept meeting up when he was in Munich.

He had now contacted me to ask if I would do a quick bit of consultancy for one of the operations in the company, the petrol station shop/catering part, known under the brand name Viva, as I had previous experience of catering and particularly internal financial controls.

Financially I could hardly refuse, €1,200 plus expenses for a day's work, so took 18:35 evening flight from Munich to Vienna, taxi to hotel, next morning taxi to the test kitchen/cafe/shop set up, 3 hours 'work', discussing the set-up, taxi to airport,12:30 flight back to Munich. Less than 24 hours and I saw NOTHING of Vienna!

Until David finally left OMV around 2015, he was always suggesting I came to stay over with him for a weekend. I sadly never managed it. I still have some of his German house furniture he gave me when he left Wienerwald in 1991 for Florida. He's now semi retired living in Portugal, spending lots of time in his London residence and generally flying around the world enjoying himself.

Such a shame, I have to get back there one day. It's only 400 km from Munich, 4.5 hours by car.