Over to work now – Raiffeisen Bank looked to quite prominent in the region. Last time I was in transit in Vienna airport, almost all the aerobridges out there endorsed the yellow R-Bank label. And over here within a radius of 100m from our hotel, I could spot that yellow board no less than five or six times – be it branch or ATM. Our office was at Pankrac station and it was the head office of the bank in Czech. It was a twenty seven-storied building and I learnt that it was the tallest building in Czech Republic.
Work started off in full-swing from day-1 itself and along with the house hunting process (already mentioned in previous blog) we had to open our bank accounts since we would be paid a salary in CZK. We were told we would not need to go anywhere since Citibank representatives are going to come to our office and get the accounts opened for all of us. I mean fill up the application forms for all of us. That was one weird thing to digest. Citibank sales persons are going to walk into the Raiffeisen Bank head-office, sit in their cozy conference room and open 30-odd savings bank accounts for their contractors. How strange can that be? East Europeans were always known to be laid back but talking about basic business sense, this certainly wasn’t one. I wonder if this would have happened on the other side of Europe.
We went for our first outing to Karlovy Vary – a small town located in a valley 140 Kms from Prague. It’s a place famous for film festivals and I learnt later that even Satyajit Ray was a visitor to this place for screening of some of his highly critically acclaimed films. A quiet, beautiful place, located in a valley, had a whole lot of beautiful buildings which you could goon clicking. Twelve of us were on the trip and we could easily walk around the whole place twice and even managing to locate an Indian restaurant to have a sumptuous Indian lunch along with some beer. Along with the film festivals, the town is also known for its spas and massage centers but unfortunately not many were operational on a weekend. A rich man’s town – it is occupied mostly by Russians. Most of the property is Russian-owned, purchased at dirt-cheap throwaway rates during the communist regime pre-1989. It was a beautiful walk and it resembled Shimla a lot especially with the houses on the hilly slopes. It also had a cobbled mall-road type lane, typical in most hill stations.
Work started off in full-swing from day-1 itself and along with the house hunting process (already mentioned in previous blog) we had to open our bank accounts since we would be paid a salary in CZK. We were told we would not need to go anywhere since Citibank representatives are going to come to our office and get the accounts opened for all of us. I mean fill up the application forms for all of us. That was one weird thing to digest. Citibank sales persons are going to walk into the Raiffeisen Bank head-office, sit in their cozy conference room and open 30-odd savings bank accounts for their contractors. How strange can that be? East Europeans were always known to be laid back but talking about basic business sense, this certainly wasn’t one. I wonder if this would have happened on the other side of Europe.
We went for our first outing to Karlovy Vary – a small town located in a valley 140 Kms from Prague. It’s a place famous for film festivals and I learnt later that even Satyajit Ray was a visitor to this place for screening of some of his highly critically acclaimed films. A quiet, beautiful place, located in a valley, had a whole lot of beautiful buildings which you could goon clicking. Twelve of us were on the trip and we could easily walk around the whole place twice and even managing to locate an Indian restaurant to have a sumptuous Indian lunch along with some beer. Along with the film festivals, the town is also known for its spas and massage centers but unfortunately not many were operational on a weekend. A rich man’s town – it is occupied mostly by Russians. Most of the property is Russian-owned, purchased at dirt-cheap throwaway rates during the communist regime pre-1989. It was a beautiful walk and it resembled Shimla a lot especially with the houses on the hilly slopes. It also had a cobbled mall-road type lane, typical in most hill stations.
1 Comment
The Citibank sales guys opening your bank account for you in a 'rival' bank premise was hilarious….