I wish Merry Christmas to all our team and all our clients! I hope you are enjoying a peaceful and rewarding respite to the daily toils of your work.
Here's a quick look at our Foliovision Christmas this year. Normally at Christmas we have either a Christmas dinner or a New Year's dinner (depending on the calendar). This year we decided to do something different and go to a concert as a team. Our dear Anna Dudasova couldn't join us for Christmas as she was dancing the lead role in the IMT Smile + Lucnica program.
There was a huge and thrilled audience for the third and sold out show
Normally around here company parties are without partners. It's one of the strangest traditions in Slovakia to my mind (along with the one of inviting acquaintances to one's wedding ceremony but not inviting them to the party afterwards: in Canada we might do the opposite - family only at the ceremony). Finally this year we overcame that tradition and almost everyone came with his or her partner. It was really nice to do this Christmas event in a really social way.
As a side note, almost everyone working in Foliovision now is someone with a long term partner (whether married or not and lots of us are married now). On a similar note, we are now onto child number four in Foliovision, with the birth of our Constantin in April.
Babysitters singing on stage at Incheba
Three of Constantin's babysitters were dancing in the Lucnica concert so when our babysitter got sick at the last minute we had to take Constantin to the concert. Fortunately Slovakia is extremely child-friendly (children are really well looked after here in what is a very family centric culture). Lucia and I watched from the VIP section (thanks Jackie!) as the music was too amplified in the main pit for a baby.
Anna Dudasova with the marriage cord wound around her slim waist
The concert was great, a unique and successful mix of pop-music and folk culture. The dance numbers made a decent concert into an amazing show. IMT Smile lead singer is a bit too Joe Cocker to my taste and many of the musicians and artists working at Foliovision. But like Bruce Springstreen, he does have a great voice and an effective stage demeanor.
These Lucnica guys can really jump. Check out the vertical on this.
At the end of the concert, an astonishing and beautiful nativity scene.
Anna waves us good night (she's the on second level closest to camera, looking at us)
A quick group portrait with Anna and her husband Misko after the show
After the concert we went out for drinks at the unique Italian bar in Bratislava . All the food, coffee and wine comes direct from Italy, brought back by the café owners themselves once a month by car. We enjoyed the most extraordinary Buffalo Mozarella and a fabulous bottle of wine. They also keep their beer taps extremely clean (washing them out every two days instead of the usual week) which means the Pilsner tastes just as fresh and frothy as in Prague.
Enjoying great Italian wine and food at La Vecchia Bottega at Medená 17
We partied to one in the morning which is when this photo of Constantin and his mom was taken.
Constantin enjoying the party with Lucia
Truly a very Merry Christmas. A big thanks to our friends at Lucnica and Anna D. for putting such a great evening together. Apparently the cultural event was a hit so perhaps we'll help our waistlines again next year by missing another Christmas feast and go to a concert again.
Most of us have so much to be grateful to not live through a time of world war. This generation of politicians seems to have forgotten the devastation such a war brings and what the loss of two generations of men does to families and countries. My Christmas prayer is that level heads will prevail and we'll avoid the nuclear war Washington is working so hard to provoke.
Christmas lights at La Vecchia Bottega
We've devastated our planet, doing more damage in the last 150 years than in the previous two hundred thousand years of human existence. It's time we took the pedal off the gas and started to work on a solution to what will take generations to cleanup, instead of building more engines of war and destruction. There's much talk of a second coming at the end of the world. I'm not sure if there will be a second coming but if we don't all say no the chance for the end of the world are good.
Envoi for 2016
Kiss your loved ones good night, count your blessings and fight relentlessly for a better world.
Alec Kinnear
Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.
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