Grad School Adventures- "J'Adore Paris"

Bonjour!

Over Christmas my girlfriend Christine and I spend 3 very magical days in Paris. What a vibrant and amazing city. It was a great experience and a Christmas to remember! We decided not to plan too much of our trip to Paris ahead of time, until the night before. We googled things to do, outside of the obvious, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, etc. We also are traveling on a budget, so we try to find things we can do for cheap or free. It is also a lot of fun to read blogs, and travel guides to get insider tips etc. For those who are planning a trip, make sure to allow time for things to not go as planned, and take it with a smile and not get upset. My Grandma Griggs once taught me that it is okay to get lost, that is where memories are made! We used to get in the car and drive and take turns telling her what direction to go next and just get lost. This is a great lesson when traveling; Allow yourself to get lost while traveling, you might just find some of the coolest places, and make the best memories by getting lost. 

We had a blast taking in the Eiffel Tower, walking the streets of Montmartre, and exploring Christmas Markets. Below is our adventure!

Paris was simply amazing, it was a wonderful, magical, and beautiful city. We absolutely enjoyed our 3 days in Paris and want to go back!

Our journey started on the morning of December 23rd, a date never to forget as it is Christine’s birthday. We got up at 6 am that morning to make our journey from the hotel in Munich, to catch a train to the airport and on our flight shortly after 8 am. We landed in Paris around 11 am and jumped on the AirFrance bus that shuttles you into Paris. That was a long bus ride as we were ready to be there and tired from an early morning of travel, finally around 1:30 pm we arrived to our AirBnB in Paris with a beautiful view of the Eiffel Tour out front of the building! We spent our first afternoon in Paris by stopping into a restaurant called Carmine and had a great burger for lunch and shared a bottle of delicious French wine in celebration of Christine’s birthday. We then made our way to the Eiffel Tower and wandered through a Christmas Market. As the sun started to set the Eiffel Tower was lit up and man, it was GORGEOUS! It was a great way to spend the afternoon/evening in such a beautiful city.

The next day we got up and grabbed a delicious Starbuck’s and headed on our journey to Montmartre famous as a “village of sin” from the movie ‘Moulin Rouge’ and is known as the Red Light District and the village of the artists. This is a beautiful part of the city across the river and is set up on hill. We started by wandering up the hill to the Basilique Du Sacre-Coeur (Basilica of the Sacred Heart). Cool story about this Church that we learned from my sister-in-law Kelly is that there are bullet holes in the side of the church. During one of the wars, this part of France was heavily bombed and much of the area was destroyed, except this church, which is why it is known as the Sacred Heart. We climbed up the 300 steps to the top of the dome to see beautiful views of the city as the sun started to come out. It was an awesome church and started our day off right. The night before I read a travel guide of Montmartre because I am a fan of Moulin Rouge and wanted to experience that part of the city, the guide goes on to explain how many tourist take the main road up, walk the stairs, tour the church, get pestered by artist sketching them, and come back down the way they came, “wondering what all the fuss was about”. The guide insisted that we get lost down the side streets and wander around as many famous artist once lived and were inspired in these streets. We started our trip down to find Picasso’s studio, there was only one other tourist that stumbled upon this cool piece of history and we took a picture for her, then Christine rubbed the door knob for some creativity from the great artist! From there, we travelled down Rue Lepic the major street of Montmartre that leads from the top of the hill to the river and stopped by Van Gogh’s apartment where he lived for 2 years. Again we took a few pictures and Christine rubbed the door handle for some inspiration and creativity. This was a very cool part of the trip for both of us as it was such a beautiful village and is not very travelled to by tourist as they all flock to the Louvre, Notre Damn Cathedral, and the Eiffel Tower. For her as an artist and a designer this was such an awesome experience and I could tell her creativity and spirit was buzzing from the energy there. We walked down to the bottom of the hill as it started to rain and we were hungry and craving a beer so we looked around at a couple places and decided to back track to a pub that Christine had pointed out called Pub Montmartre. We were just attracted to it for some reason and as soon as we walked in we knew we made the right decision! When we walked in everyone was standing around drinking wine and everyone was speaking French, which when you are traveling is what we always look for because you know that it is not a tourist trap and bound to be good food! The owner of the bar was working, he spoke very good English and took care of us. Christine had a great bowl of soup while I had the best bacon cheeseburger I have had abroad! As we were about to leave we notice a movie poster on the wall, “The Bridges of Madison County”, everywhere we go somehow we end up with some reference back to Iowa! It is crazy. After that we finally made it to Moulin Rouge! The area there is full of bars, pubs, hotels, sex shops, and other tourist shops and food joints. It was really cool to see this iconic landmark and added to my bucket list; see a show at the Moulin Rouge.

That afternoon did not turn out as planned as were trying to make our way to the Arc of Triumph and ended up across town at the newly built Great Arch. We decided that since we wanted to go to Notre Damn and check out the Church of Saint Chapelle, we went home to change and made our way to the other side of town. Once we got to St. Chapelle we realized that visits were now closed for the 5:30 mass. Christine was really disappointed because this church is one she studied about in school and she has always wanted to see. We headed over to Cathedral De Notre Dame- Paris which was full of armed guards, tourists, and church goers. We got in cue and made our way into the Cathedral to take our places for Christmas Eve Mass. This was such a wonderful experience and was really cool to attend mass in such a beautiful and iconic Cathedral. It was a great way to end the day, on our way home we walked over the Pont de L’Archeveche which is the bridge with all the locks where we saw a couple that had just gotten engaged. We made our way home trying to find a place to eat dinner on Christmas Eve, which is hard to do. We stopped into a restaurant and sat down, we both had a feeling about this place but it was the only lit up shop on the street so we went in anyway. Once we sat down we saw that Christmas dinner was 75 Euro, and most of it was fish (Christine is not a fan) so we embarrassingly got up and left and headed towards McDonald’s as I was getting hangry (hungry angry) at this point and just wanted something easy and cheap. As we got to McDonald’s I saw off to our right a sandwich shop with the cook sitting out front smoking a cigarette, so we changed course and had a very good and cheap meal of a cheeseburger and doner kebab for dinner. 

On Christmas day we got up and headed up to the Sommet of the Eiffel Tour. It was beautiful to see the city from the top. It is such a cool experience, minus that there are SO many people that bug you trying to sell you everything from sketches and selfie sticks, to laser pointers and Eiffel Tower replicas. We then walked to check out the pyramid at the Louvre and walked down Avenue Montaigne which was a beautiful street full of 5 star hotels and all the top designer stores, Gucci, Versace, Armani, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and others. It was a really cool street similar to Montenapoleone in Milan. From there we wandered through their HUGH Christmas market on Avenue Des Champs Elysees and enjoyed some street food and finally making it to check out the Louvre which was pretty cool.  By this time after 6 days of exploring 2 amazing and beautiful cities we were exhausted, we headed back to pack up, take a small nap, and head to the airport back to Milan.

When we finally got back to Milan we were exhausted and thankful that for the first time in over a week, we did not have to wake up to any plans, or an alarm..!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas, Buon Natale, or as the French Joyeux Noel! I hope you have a Wonderful and Happy New Years! May 2016 bring you a year of blessings, joys, accomplishments, and happiness!

Feel free to connect with me if you haven't already on Facebook (Robby Napoli) on LinkedIn :https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119 or on Twitter @RobbyNap.

Grad School Adventures: "Munich, Germany"

  

The Christmas Holidays have arrived, and my girlfriend Christine and I decided to do some traveling as we were not going to be going back home to the States. Our journey was set, plane tickets bought, and our hotel/AirBnB’s booked. We were off to spend 3 days in Munich and 3 days in Paris! 

Our initial thoughts about Germany:

• Friendly
• Helpful
• Clean
• Efficient
• Good Food
• Good Beer

*Everything in Germany was efficient, and always worked the way it was supposed to. It felt like being in a toy land as the buildings looked like they were freshly painted, everything was lined up and uniform, and everything was clean. Definitely a different look and feel from Italy just a hop, skip, and a jump away to the south.

We woke on the 20th with our bags packed and embarked on our journey to the airport. When we arrived at the airport we found out that Christine’s carry on was ‘too big’ and therefore had to check it, thanks easy jet. While waiting on our flight there were about a dozen bikers with Hells Angels cuts on waiting to board with us, we found this fun and a little intimidating as we are both big Sons of Anarchy fans. While waiting to board the couple in front of us turned around and said, “man its good to hear english”, we started chatting up this couple who were on an ‘extended’ vacation. They were a couple from Virginia, he was 31, she was 28, and they both decided to quit their jobs and travel Europe before starting a family. They were a fun couple to talk to and hear about their experiences as they had visited quite a bit of Northern Europe and had just finished up their tour of Italy and were headed to Germany for a week and then had a few other destinations before returning back to the States in January.

It really seems that when we travel we tend to meet some amazing people and we both enjoy learning about their experiences. Previously I had talked about a girl traveling Europe from Australia. It is amazing and humbling to talk and learn from fellow travelers, and hearing their experiences really make us believe in what we are doing by chasing our own dreams.

We landed in Munich around noon and made our way to find the train which was easy to find, we were looking at the ticket screen deciding which one to buy when a friendly German guy (he was a pig farmer and had no teeth but friendly none the less) helped us to find the ticket and offered to split a group rate with us making it cheaper for all of us, he did so then he walked with us a bit and pointed us in the direction of our hotel. Very friendly. We also noticed how clean and efficient the train system was. It was easy to understand the signage, you enter on the right always and exit on the left always (In Italy you never know if the doors will open on the left or right and your fighting to get out through the people trying to get on) It was a smooth ride, easy to stand and not fall over (Again in Italy you will go flying to the front of the car when the train begins to stop because they slam on the breaks). 

Once checking into our hotel we met up with one of Christine’s best friends from back in her hometown,Amanda, who used to live in Hamburg, Germany and knows a bit about Munich and it was nice having some people help us with German since we didn't know anything about the city. We spent the first day wandering around, checking out the awesome architecture (Christine loved as she is an Interior Design Student), and trying the different beers and food (which I enjoyed). The food in Bavaria was excellent, being a midwest boy we love our pork, and Germans do too! Win Win in the food department. 

The following day we when to Dachau, which was the first concentration camp and built as a model for all other concentration camps. It was mostly for political prisoners but was definitely horrific none the less. We walked through the city of Dachau to get to the camp and we were thinking about the people who lived there and what they must have thought. This camp was not secret; everyone knew it was there but supposedly the locals did not know the extent of what was going on in the camp. As the survivors of this camp said they wanted all the know and see and never forget about this place and I agree that it is important for all to understand. Our German friend couldn’t imagine why we would want to visit such a horrible place; it was hard to explain to her why it is important for us to see it. We saw the infamous gate which reads; “Work sets you free”, just behind it in the area for roll call and where the prisoners would stand and be tortured for hours. Many died there. We also got to see the inside of the barracks and how they must have lived. Lastly we went to the crematorium where of course the bodies were cremated (this is why I can’t believe no one knew, the smoke and the stench must have been horrendous) I found it interesting that the US military forced all the citizens of Dachau to look at the mound of bodies that were piled up outside the crematorium to see what had been going on there. It was definitely overall a moving experience. 

The following day we visited the Residenz which holds art and treasures of the royal Bavarian families. It was amazing and incredibly luxurious. We spent a good 2 1/2 hours wondering around the museum and listening to the audio guide. It was a wonderful way to spend our last day in Munich. That evening we met up with one of my classmates who is from Munich and her boyfriend and went out to dinner at a traditional Bavarian restaurant. They helped us by suggestions some awesome food and beers to drink, and then at the end of the meal we had a traditional after dinner ‘digestive’ shot of liquor. What a way to finish off our trip to Munich, hanging out with good company in a good local establishment!

We are so lucky to be able experience the world and travel, in doing so we really get a chance to learn and experience other cultures. Both of us are looking to get into international business in our respective fields, which is why we wanted to study abroad in Italy while getting our Masters Degree’s. These experience are helping us really understand what it means, and more importantly what it takes to establish meaningful cross cultural relationships. 

  

  

Grad School Adventures: "Rome"

“Rome”

They call it the “Eternal City”, and eternal and magical it is. I had the pleasure of spending 4 days in Rome last weekend and that was not enough time to spend in the city. There is something to be said about spending time in such a dirty city, where people and trash are everywhere, and public transportation is always packed and unreliable. But the city is full of wonders, it was for a long time in the history of the world, the center of civilization. From the moment we arrived you could feel the pulse and buzz of the city. They say that “all roads lead to Rome”, and it is true! In Europe there are over a 1/2 million roads that lead to Rome.

The architecture and food were amazing! I had the best Carbonara in Rome at a wonderful restaurant called Polese, located at Piazza Sforza Cesarini, 40 Roma. And bonus they had a framed note from the Iowa Hawkeyes Basketball team from a meal that they had while playing in Roma. Also Christine took me to this little Take Away Pizza Shop and it might have been the best pizza I have ever tried, and it is right across from what the Roman’s call the “Cat Sanctuary” which are ruins from 3 old temples, and is right across from the Theater where Caesar was stabbed before being carried to the Roman Forum.

While in Rome, Christine who had lived in Rome for a total of 8 months, was my tour guide. This was both good and bad as she had a lot of good insight, but also was so excited to show me everything that we were always on the move. We started off by visiting the Trevi Fountain, which was probably my favorite moment. It was gorgeous! I threw 3 coins in the fountain; the legend is 1 coin and you will return to Rome, 2 coins and you will find love, and 3 coins for marriage. We also visited Campo di Fiori, translated to English as “Field of Flowers” because the entire piazza was covered in flower boxes hanging from the windows as this was the place where unfortunately, people were burned at the stake. During the day it is an awesome fresh food market, and by night the area where many American students hang out one of the many cool bars in the piazza. 

In Piazza Navona there is a beautiful statue by Bernini that represents at the time, the 4 continents, Europe, Americas, Africa, and Asia. The piazza used to be a circus for water sports and now is a great artsy area. For those that may have seen the show “Rome” on HBO we visited the Aventine Hill, as well as visiting Capitoline Hill which features a HUGE Monument to Vittorio Emanuelle. This was built by Mussolini as his capital building which is known as the “wedding cake” building, and the piazza is where he held his military addresses and training.

Colosseum

Trevi Foun

We also visiting the Colosseum, the Pantheon, walked the streets of Trastevere, which is an area rich in culture where Christine lived while studying in Rome, as well as visiting the Jewish Ghetto, which is where ISU Rome Campus is located. This area still has strong Jewish roots as it was the area the Jewish were confined too during the 2nd World War. On our final day we visited Castle Sant’ Angelo and The Vatican and took in the beauty. It was absolutely gorgeous! They were setting everything up for the Jubilee which started the next day, and unfortunately were not able to tour it. 

Piazza Navona

It is hard to put into words the feeling you get from seeing these views and feeling the history everywhere. It was such an amazing experience and I cant wait to go back over New Years. Also while in Rome we hung out at a few pubs that Christine was familiar with from her time there called the Abbey Theatre and Scholars and I got to meet some of her awesome friends from her time there before. They were all extremely friendly and just a lot of fun to hang with. I have to say that when we left Rome we fully exhausted from long days of walking, and fun nights with friends. 

While there I met a very cool girl from Australia who was traveling Europe on her own and was feeling a bit lost (no physically but metaphorically) and I feel like I met her at the right time to help her see value in what she was doing but giving her some advice and letting her know about my story. We invited her out that evening with Christine’s friends and she had just the best time and ended up staying a few extra days in Rome. She happened to meet us at the time she needed it most, the Universe gave her the sign she needed. She is also a Marketing professional and she is interested in Grad School at MIP Polimi!

Pano of the Vatican Piazza

We also meet people from all over and have stories from our conversations with each one of them, but to me this is what traveling offers, rich experiences, and pure human interaction. Where people from all over the world can meet and share stories and bond and enjoy life. Traveling offers such a unique perspective and teaches you a lot about yourself and about others. I like many others used to say I will travel when I have the time, money, etc, but I am learning there really is no “perfect” time, you just have to do it! I am very thankful that I have this amazing opportunity not only to study in Italy, but also travel Europe. Once here it is very inexpensive to travel thanks to trains, Ryan Air, Easy Jet, public transportation, and AirBNB.

I challenge those who are thinking about taking a trip or to study abroad to do it. You will never regret doing it and taking the chance!

Awesome friends from the weekend at Scholar's Lounge

Christine and I in Piazza Venezia

Grad School Adventures: "Learn By Doing"

Week 11:

Lesson of the Week: “Learn By Doing”

*1/3 of what we learn is from University, the other 2/3 are from doing, from living, from making mistakes, and from having success. Our professor who was delivering a lesson on Self Marketing started off with this perspective. We can learn a lot from books, and we should always be learning, but we learn more from doing that reading. 

Over the last week we had some good discussions around Change Management, Drivers, and the Okay Corral Theory. We also competed in week long Business Game Simulator where we competed over 6 quarters to run an airline and make decisions regarding pricing, flight offerings, promotions, and marketing communication. Then after making decisions we prepared a presentation to our “shareholders” to show our results and how we can sustain and grow our business in the following years. The topics discussed and the simulator made for an intense and competitive week on campus.

Change Management: this is an important topic in todays business place as companies are aligning themselves to be more global, or to be online, etc. Many mergers and acquisitions are taking place and the market is ever-changing and companies need to change with it. When going through Change Management whether it is on a full scale company level or at the team level it is important understand your team. You can impose strategy, procedures, and process, but you can not impose culture. Culture must be changed through transition and acceptance of culture shift and be done over time. 

There are 5 drivers of people:

1. Hurry Up!- These are people like me, we move fast, all the time. Sometimes too fast. These are the people who say yes to a plan without checking their calendar because there is “no time” to check it, only to find out they have prior commitments.
2. Make the Effort!- These are the people who make unnecessary efforts to get from A to B. They are the ones who have a test a month out, and through the process of studying go way out of their way and are the ones who are still studying until 5 am the day of the test to be unnecessarily tired to take the test. They tend to overcomplicate things.
3. Be Strong!- These are the people who ignore all messages to stay where you are and move forward. They tend to have to “be strong” and do things even when they are emotionally and/or physically to exhausted to do so. This tends to have a negative effect as they tend to lose sensitivity to their internal warning systems.
4. Be Perfect!- This one speaks for themselves, the ones who have to always be right, and be perfect at no expense.
5. Try to Please!- These are the people who will always say yes, and will please everyone, even when they do not have the time or capability to do so because they are too afraid to disappoint.

All of these drivers are activated by stress. A good manager will understand their team and try and balance work based on drivers as not to over-stress and activate drivers.

The other main focus was on the Okay Corral Theory:

Now this is on the basis of 4 mental states.

Quadrant 1- I am okay, you are okay

Quadrant 2- I am okay, you are not okay

Quadrant 3- I am not okay, you are okay

Quadrant 4- No one is okay

This was a very unique and intriguing experience. As someone who has worked in B2B Sales and Marketing I was able to think back to meeting many people that fit into these different categories, as well as thinking about how I was able to partner with people in the different quadrants and with different drivers to obtain objectives and goals. I know there are many different theories and styles in regards to these topics but this is one we had an in depth lesson on that provided some great insight to evaluating myself and knowing what I am good at. It also provided a chance for me to look at how to best identity and partner with individuals that fall into different categories.

Business Game:

This was a wonderful experience! I was teamed out with classmates from France, Germany, Italy, and China. We decided that our airline was going to offer the most flights destinations and provide high quality service.

There were 4 Segments: 

• Long Haul/Intercontinental
• Short Haul
• Charter
• Service Offerings (Hotel, Car Rental, etc)

Within these 4 segments were 4 target groups:

• Business Travelers (least price sensitive and not price elastic)
• Tourist (very price elastic)
• Incentive Travelers (very price sensitive)
• Groups (price sensitive and elastic)

We focused heavily on Short Haul Business and Tourist as this was the most profitable segment with our 2nd are of focus on Long Haul as it offered the Highest Margins.

Our strategy was extremely successful, we made an early mistake on pricing but ended up winning by earning over $900,000,000 in profit!

It was a fantastic competition as we were able to “learn by doing” in a simulation of real life scenarios and decisions to be made. Experiences like this definitely help prepare us for the marketplace. 

As always I hope that there is a takeaway or two in here for everyone. If you have any questions or would like to discuss some of these issue more in depth feel free to write a comment or shoot me a note at robbynap87@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @RobbyNap and connect with me on LinkedIn at https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119

Ciao Ciao!

Grad School Adventures: Week 10: "Practice Makes Perfect"

Week 10: November 23-28th

Lesson of the Week: “Practice makes perfect”

Now this is nothing new to anyone but for me it came into play this last week. Over the weekend Christine and I hosted some of our friends over for an American Thanksgiving dinner, which was deliciously prepared by yours truly…. lol jk actually it was wonderfully and deliciously prepared by Christine!

My job was to go to the store (bum bum bum) which is daunting as the Italian supermarkets are ALWAYS busy. Doesn't matter a day or time, always busy. And not entirely sure why but whenever I stop somewhere in a store in Italy, to stand out of the way, to check my phone, to cross something off a list, always and I mean always people have to come look at whatever I am standing next too. There could be no one around and when I move boom people. Coincidence?!

So Friday afternoon I embarked on my journey for a pretty long list as Christine has had one heck of a busy week at school, I managed to do well, only not finding 6 items. 

After coming home and sorting through our groceries, Christine and I planned out our attack for Saturday morning to get the remaining items, this time as I embarked on my journey, I was once again met with the challenge of not finding what I was looking for after searching all over. So what was the next logical thing to do, ask for assistance. Now this alway makes me nervous, (yes me, who loves to, and will talk to about anyone) because I get what I need to say in Italian ready, run through my lines to ensure dictation etc, and then I get to ask and freeze, and instead of use Italian, I fumble through in English and trying to talk with my hands. 

But I have been practicing, and on Saturday I was able to ask for what I needed and got it! After that when I went to one of our favorite local Egyptian Kebab places to grab a quick lunch in the midst of cooking a feast, I asked for and ordered everything in Italian only!!!  I have been trying really hard to learn Italian and been taking a class 2x a week that in graciously offered by our school. But as much as I know when doing worksheets and writing, talking is the hardest. Slowly though I am learning and practicing. And this goes to the point that practice makes perfect.If I don't try, I don't learn.

On the school front, classes have continued to pick and we have been diving into some good topics! The other day we were having a discussion around Innovation the skills of innovators. The key takeaways or top 5 skills of an innovator are:

• Questioning- be curious always, learn
• Observing- pay attention to the world around you and what people are doing and using, and how
• Networking- Network, Network, Network! And not just within your field, you need to network with others outside your field to gain valuable knowledge, insight, and ideas
• Experimenting- try and do not be afraid to fail
• Associating

We also had a lesson with the Director of Brand Fashion and Luxury give us an excellent presentation around Brand and the effect of Pricing on a brands equity. This is a big point of emphasis for company want to be positioned as a premium product and high priced, high fashion line. To counteract this and to not diminish your brand equity, companies must diversify their product and brand portfolio. We also discussed the ‘Brand Iceberg’, there is the external brand that everyone sees and knows, i.e. the logo, slogan, etc, and then there is the internal branding. This visual representation, I believe, is spot on! Living in Milano, a city known for being at the center of the fashion world, it was great to see and use examples in class of companies like Armani, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and others. It made for an interesting and intriguing lesson as the fashion industry is an industry I would be very interested in working in. 

I am excited as next week we will be competing in a Business Game Simulator. The goal is to run an airline and make decisions regarding Marketing, Pricing, Flight Options, Communications, and Network. This will be a great hands on experience putting to use our experience in strategy and positioning as well as getting to work in a multi cultural environment. This simulator will allows to make real world decisions and compete with our classmates! Next post I will make sure to let you know how it goes!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving back in the States!

As always I hope that there is a takeaway or two in here for everyone. If you have any questions or would like to discuss some of these issue more in depth feel free to write a comment or shoot me a note at robbynap87@gmail.com. You can also follow me on Twitter @RobbyNap and connect with me on LinkedIn at https://it.linkedin.com/in/robert-napoli-a5839119

Ciao Ciao!

Below is the spread from our American Thanksgiving in Milano! We shared with our friends from Egypt, Turkey, Colombia, Taiwan, and the Philippines!