Master thesis IV

Time flies. The last post was about my trip to Rome, but until now already three weeks have passed. The Easter weekend was not so spectacular, we had brunch on Sunday morning and on friday Livia invited me and Urs for dinner at her place. I watched some movies, City of God for example and Up In The Air with George Clooney. This movie was actually one of the best movies that I've seen recently and that is obviously not only my opinion as it also won a Golden Globe.

Yesterday evening I was in Zurich together with Sophie and Marcus, a student from Stuttgart. We met pretty early as we wanted to go to the Future is Now festival but hadn't bought any tickets in advance. So we waited in front of Exil, where we later would see Richard Dorfmeister spin his discs. Some acts didn't even made it to the festival because all the airspace over europe was closed due to the volcano Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland. But they were not the only one that were affected. I knew so many people that either could not leave for their holidays and meetings and conferences or they could not return back. I even heard the story, that a plane from Venice left 50 minutes earlier than scheduled, so that it could land in Zurich just before the airspace was completely closed. This is an event nobody would ever have imagined could happen. But it shows how vulnerable we as a society are, if things we take for granted don't work anymore.

Master thesis III

Last weekend I was in Rome with McKinsey. They welcomed us at their office at Zurich Airport on Friday morning. We first got breakfast and had the opportunity to get to know each other. Actually I spotted some familiar faces, people I already met at consulting workshops at Roland Berger or Monitor. We spent the morning in Zurich, had a delicious sushi and sashimi buffet and started with the case study, which was actually about the food business. We then had a short flight to Rome and were picked up by a bus that headed towards the city center, to the Hotel Ripa (Via degli Orti di Trastevere 3). Regretably, the website gives a better impression of the hotel than what we found in reality. However, we didn't spend much time in our rooms anyway. After checking in, we already left soon after for a good italian restaurant somewhere in Trastevere. I actually tried to see Thomas, who also was in Rome with his architecture class that week. Unfortunately, it was a matter of impossibility, as we both were together with a large group which makes it pretty difficult to get yourself separated.
Anyway, the next morning we had to get up early and work on our case. The team spirit in my team was just awesome and we worked together as if we knew each other for much longer. Every team had also some kind of supervisor, which was a real McKinsey consultant, and here again, we were lucky to have someone with a lot of experience and, even more important, someone that was open-minded and funny. After lunch at the hotel we had an excellent city guide, that showed us around and I might say that we got to know many beautiful places, which an ordinary tourist would never have seen. For dinner we went to eat at Gaetano Costa (Via Sicilia 45), which was just excellent. So far, I never saw people applauding for a dinner. That night though, this changed. And indeed, the menu was wonderful. After a coffee we walked to the Club La Maison (Vicolo dei Granari 3), where we had reserved tables. Again we all had a lot of fun together!