Northern Lights

Posted: Friday 7 November 08, 11.06am GMT

A busy travelling month in October including the CSR Europe NPO meeting in Bologna, an Ethical Corporation conference in Barcelona, NGO and company seminars in Moscow with IBLF Russia and CAF Russia, and finally visits to partners and companies in Sweden and Finland.

A curious feature of international networking is a strange tendency not to eat the cuisine of the country concerned, but to boldly go to others.

Thus, in Moscow, Maria Jose and I were introduced by Brook Horowitz, Director of IBLF Moscow, to the Scandinavia Restaurant where we were able to eat herring rollmops and roast elk. So no borscht or blinis.

Maria Jose and I did find a café bar called Traktir, a name which seemed familiar to me. Had it featured in a John le Carre spy novel ? Had Dostoevsky brooded there? Excitedly we told Brook that we had discovered the legendary Café Traktir! “Sorry,” said Brook, “Traktir is the Russian word for pub”. Ah well…

Then in Sweden with Flavia, thinking of a repeat of the herring in many disguises, it turned out that our CSR360 GPN Manager has a passion for ….. sushi. And guess what? On nearly every street in Stockholm there is a sushi bar. So we ate sushi in Scandinavia.

Regrettably, after a very good meeting with partners Harry Goldman and Marianna Bogle at CSR Sweden, we ran out of time to visit the CSR Fair where they were appearing, but did catch up with Karin Jordas, the new CEO of partner Mentor Sweden.

Looking forward to some reindeer cutlets in Helsinki, we found that it was American week in the hotel restaurant so enjoyed a rib dinner with partner Susanna Monni.

I can’t wait to check the tandoori in Milan or the ceviche de pescado in Mumbai.

First time to Moscow and a fascinating experience. We were reassured to see that it took three hours to fly from London to Moscow and three hours to drive from the airport to the hotel on arrival. It demonstrated that since the fall of the wall the city has taken its place among the other great metropolises of the globe, such as Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Rome and London, in having world-class traffic congestion.

I had not realised that behind the high dark walls of the Kremlin, there is much more than the Presidential residence and Government offices. Inside there is a very beautiful park and at least five exquisite Russian Orthodox churches, many centuries old, and perfectly maintained. In odd contrast to these and other fine classical administrative buildings from the 17th and 18th centuries is a modern conference block mandated by Nikita Khrushchev during his time as General Secretary.

The network continues to grow and it was very rewarding at the CSR Europe NPO meeting to be able to meet Serdar Dinler, CEO of CSR Turkey and Mirella Panek-Owzianska from The Polish Responsible Business Forum, both of whom we look forward to welcoming to CSR360 GPN.

David.