5 memorable business trips (2)

This is the second in my series of posts about particularly memorable business trips. As with the first (click here) it dates back to pre-email times

2 On my own in the old Yugoslavia

It was in the mid to late 80s and I was a Product Marketing Manager with Dow Chemical Europe. I was responsible for a range of products including mining chemicals and one of my more important markets for these was the old Yugoslavia where lots of copper and zinc was being mined. The local sales person was the excellent Dragana Djordjevic and she invited me to visit late one year so that we could agree prices and volumes for the new year with our customers there.

I flew into Skopje, nowadays the capital of North Macedonia, where Dragana met me only to tell me that her father had been taken ill and that she needed to return to Belgrade. This meant that I would make the customer calls on my own ‘but’ she said ‘I’ll make all the arrangements’.

My hotel was modern but basic. I’m not sure if there was any carpet underlay in the bedroom but you could feel the concrete of the floor beneath it.

We had been due to make two calls. The first was easy and that was in Skopje itself. The second however was up country, probably in present day Kosovo, and more of a challenge. The customer was to send a car to pick me up. ‘Wait in the hotel’ I was told.

It was late autumn/early winter so dark pretty early and I was picked up by a guy, every inch a Tito partisan look alike, with a car which would struggle to pass an MOT. We headed off along unlit roads on a journey of unknown length. There were few sign posts but they would not help anyway because I didn’t know where I was going. My driver spoke no English, I spoke none of his language, he probably smoked.

After an hour or so we stopped at a cafe, it was time for a coffee, then an hour or so later he drove me up to my hotel and somehow explained to me that he’d pick me up at some time the next day.

I seem to remember the hotel was fine, maybe a step up from the one in Skopje, that dinner was ‘nourishing’ and that beer was freely available.

Next morning I checked out and became aware that the hotel had two prices. A lower price for local nationals and a higher one for foreigners.

My driver picked me up and took me to the mining company’s offices and then drove me back to the airport at Skopje. It was of course daylight and that seemed to make it easier to communicate, somehow we worked out that we both had two children. Then when we got to the airport I felt that I should reward him somehow but I had no local money. What I did have was a small card sized pocket calculator and I gave him that. The modern day equivalent maybe of giving someone an iPhone. He was delighted.

My return to Switzerland required me to make a connection in Zagreb but my flight in was late and missed it. I booked in to the Intercontinental, slowly readjusted to Western European standards and got the first flight out next day. Dragana’s arrangements had worked just fine!