London Calling

Hello Everyone! And welcome back to another critically acclaimed edition of the Pullen Files. Today we begin Europe III: The Balkans. I have decided to change up my methods for publishing my posts this time around as I will now be graded on these journals by my professor for this trip and I am doubting that he will have access to myspace, so today also begins the initiation of mikepullen.blogspot.com. I will be doing my daily jounal entries and including any pics I take, so please visit often and comment where you feel the needed.

One last piece of housekeeping before I dive in, I want to give all you out there a little background on this trip, in case you are unfamiliar with why I am traveling. For 13 days, I and my fellow ASU MBA classmates will be traveling the Balkans in Southeastern Europe, mainly Sarajevo, Dubrovnik and Croatia. The goal of the class will be to gain insight into effective marketing/management decision making in the emerging Southeastern Europe context, all while experiencing many unique and amazing things.

The road to Sarajevo, our first stop on the trip, came with a 19 hour layover in London. Our direct flight from Phoenix to London went smoothly, the seats contained individual screens with the ability to watch movies (note to self: Dewey Cox owes me 2 hours of my life back for Walk Hard) and TV shows on demand, so two movies, a few tv shows, a brief nap and we're in London in no time. Now if only our travel to the hotel and the city were as easy.....

Our plan for London seemed simple, get from London Heathrow to London gatwick to take the hotel shuttle to our hotel drop off our bags, freshen up, catch the shuttle back to gatwick, catch the train to victoria station and catch all the sites we could before sundown. Well what looks simple on paper, isnt always true in real life...which was the case for us. There were 5 of us on the Phoenix to London flight in the class, so after deboarding, getting through customs we found where we needed to get to to catch our shuttle that would take us from Terminal 4 to Heathrow central bus station. The shuttle was scheduled to run every 30 minutes and we were in prime position to catch the next shuttle, scheduled to arrive 5 minutes later. Well sure enough 5 minutes later the shuttle comes around, only he decides not to stop and flys right by. Two seconds later a second bus barring the same "555" symbol we were looking for pulls up and stops. However, he informs us he is not going to our destination and we in fact needed the other shuttle that had just passed us up. Another 30 minutes later we finally persuade the bus to make a stop this time and pick us up.

The shuttle took forever making every stop apparently possible, so another 30 minutes and we were finally at the Central Bus Station, an hour after our next shuttle that we had purchased advanced tickets for had departed. Fortunately, we found out that the tickets were transferrable and that we had 1 minute to race down the row of stops to catch our bus to Gatwick airport. We made the shuttle and were on our way, another 40 minute ride and we made it to Gatwick.

At Gatwick we had to track down the hotel shuttle pick up, luckily we were able to stumble across it quite easily and our shuttle was only a few minutes wait. After the 15 minute ride to the prestigious Europa Hotel (said in a very sarcastic tone), we threw down our bags and went back to catch the shuttle back to the airport. From the airport we caught the express train to Victoria Station and would soon find ourselves in the heart of London, only 4 hours after landing at Heathrow.

With the sun appearing to be getting ready to set, we quickly walked up Buckingham Palace road and found ourselves in an amazing area. In front of us was Buckingham Palace, guards and all, behind us stood a huge statue and to our left and right were two very large parks. It was quite an amazing site.

From here we walked down to Parliment which houses Big Ben and is neighbor to Abbey Cathedral. They were all massive in size and the attached pictures dont do them justice.

As it was now about 8pm and it was beginning to get dark we decided to search out a pub and have some food and drinks. We found a cool place called Alberts near the train station and had a couple drinks and some fish and chips (yep...fish and chips....it was decent, but not something I can see myself eating again, it wasnt quite what I had envisioned when I ordered it, I was thinking it would be something similar to chicken strips, but it was a huge slab of fish with skin on one side, battered and fried, served with a side of french fries and mashed peas).

After finishing a couple more beers we decided it best to head back to the station and catch the next train back to gatwick and to the hotel.

We got back around midnight and after making a couple important phone calls to let those I love know I was in London safe and sound, I hit the hay, with a 5 am wake up call waiting just around the corner to kick start our next day of travel to Sarajevo.

Now when I think of wake up call I think of someone picking up the phone at the front lobby and placing a call to our room to let us know it would be a good time to wake up now. I was wrong, apparently, the Europa views it as send a loud alarm through the phone, one that make fire alarms seem like cool jazz music. So with a kick start to the heart our day 2 or i guess it would be 3 at this point, was ready to begin. After a quick shower, we were back on the shuttle to Gatwick airport and on our way to Sarajevo.

The flight went well, the plane was pretty empty and dominated by the now 15 or so of us from ASU. I passed out shortly after take off, waking periodically to turn back the weird looking "egg sandwich" the stewardess was trying so hard to persuade me to take.

Our flight reached Sarajevo with out any problems and after passing through customs and grabbing a few Bosnian Marks we negotiated a fare with a cab and were off racing through the streets of Sarajevo to the Holiday Inn. The ride was interesting. I had a mental image of what I thought Sarajevo would look like and the ride from the airport to the holiday inn confirmed this thought. It seemed gloomy and old worldish. The buildings all appear to be in need of some refurbishment and upgrading.

We arrived at our large yellow Holiday Inn and were pleasently suprised by how nice it was on the inside. It was apparently all redone, mostly due to be shot up during the war. The rooms are nice and the views are great.

We killed the next few hours with some pizza and beers in the hotel bar. At 5pm we were greeted by a few students from the local MBA program who were to escort us through town to their school where we were scheduled to have orientation. The walk through town was great. This part of town was much nicer by far. The streets are lined with shops selling all sorts of stuff.

Upon arrival at the school we were greeted by the local staff and given an overview of what their program consisted of and what we would be doing the next couple days. They also helped to point our some nearby clubs, bars and restaurants. Heading their suggestions we were off again to find a destination for some traditional Bosnian food. This journey took us into the Old Town which is Turkish and drastically different from the rest of the city, the building are amazing and clearly from a very long time ago. The streets are stones that have been smoothed down by years and years of people walking them.

We soon came to a restaurant, I believe called "5", where we all partook in a dish called Cerriviche (my spelling may be off on that), which consisted of beef sausage like products tucked inside a traditional bread. It was delicious.

After stuffing ourselves with this traditional dish we walked down the street to a bar where all the chairs filled the center of the street and we all piled in for a few drinks before retiring to our hotel for some much needed rest.

Tomorrow will bring a sightseeing tour, a lecture from the local school, and a dinner with our local MBA counterparts.

For now I am off to bed, I will post pictures when I get a chance tomorrow as well as my next post.

Night.