Monday, 19th of Sept. 2011
Foreign Branches . Interpretations . Mentoring Staff . Sponsorships & Endorsements . Business Assiocations . Education
On this trip I became aware that Spain could survive only on the olive oil production.
From Granada to Toledo (300 KM) olive trees as far as you can see. I personally
counted 1.859.724.388 trees during our amazing drive through vast the olive farms.
Sorry, the end figure is 387 as 1 tree was broken. Spain is producing 2/3 of the
worlds olive oil consumption and if we keep increasing the use of olive oil as we do
since more than 15 years, we all deserve a free holiday in Spain.
As I mentioned before, the Spanish are experienced in handling financial crisises.
Without the world knowing every 20 years the national bank has to write off billions of acid debts which the
industry and trade have build up applying diabolical paying terms among themselves of up to 24 months. This all
financed by the banks. In the end the majority of companies cannot pay back the banks and a massive cleaning
write off takes place down the line from the banks, to the producers, distributeurs and retailers. Than they start
all over with a clean sheet untill after 20 years they reach another boiling point.
After a noisy night in Madrid we explored the environment. I have never seen such large housing developments
realized in the last 20 years. This was the picture in all the Spanish cities we visited and a lot of them are empty.
You could easily re-house a million Brits to spain and I assume they need a lot of olive pickers. We travelled on
till St-Jean-De-Luz near Biarritz. A lovely French port with plenty of hotels and restaurants. It was still buzzing
altough the holiday season was over. Again the hotel (Ibis) was very reasonable priced and the French staff were
extremely friendly. The local staff are obviously well paid as we did not notice any foreign workers. (Note: yes,
immigrants are often very hard workers) The overall lesson of this trip is that life goes on in the south of Europe,
of course everything is not as easy as it used to be. However somehow the people get on with it and the press
does not create a doom-and-gloom atmosphere. The big bonus: the hotels have recognised the fact that people
travel nowadays on budget airlines and do not want to spend triple the airfare on one overnight stay in a hotel.
The 3- and 4-star hotels have lowered their prices (between 50-80 Euro) and have upmarket their rooms.
And they finally all offer free Wi-Fi. Next journey will probably be the Benelux and Germany.
On this trip I became aware that Spain could survive only on the olive oil production.
From Granada to Toledo (300 KM) olive trees as far as you can see. I personally
counted 1.859.724.388 trees during our amazing drive through vast the olive farms.
Sorry, the end figure is 387 as 1 tree was broken. Spain is producing 2/3 of the
worlds olive oil consumption and if we keep increasing the use of olive oil as we do
since more than 15 years, we all deserve a free holiday in Spain.
As I mentioned before, the Spanish are experienced in handling financial crisises.
Without the world knowing every 20 years the national bank has to write off billions of acid debts which the
industry and trade have build up applying diabolical paying terms among themselves of up to 24 months. This all
financed by the banks. In the end the majority of companies cannot pay back the banks and a massive cleaning
write off takes place down the line from the banks, to the producers, distributeurs and retailers. Than they start
all over with a clean sheet untill after 20 years they reach another boiling point.
After a noisy night in Madrid we explored the environment. I have never seen such large housing developments
realized in the last 20 years. This was the picture in all the Spanish cities we visited and a lot of them are empty.
You could easily re-house a million Brits to spain and I assume they need a lot of olive pickers. We travelled on
till St-Jean-De-Luz near Biarritz. A lovely French port with plenty of hotels and restaurants. It was still buzzing
altough the holiday season was over. Again the hotel (Ibis) was very reasonable priced and the French staff were
extremely friendly. The local staff are obviously well paid as we did not notice any foreign workers. (Note: yes,
immigrants are often very hard workers) The overall lesson of this trip is that life goes on in the south of Europe,
of course everything is not as easy as it used to be. However somehow the people get on with it and the press
does not create a doom-and-gloom atmosphere. The big bonus: the hotels have recognised the fact that people
travel nowadays on budget airlines and do not want to spend triple the airfare on one overnight stay in a hotel.
The 3- and 4-star hotels have lowered their prices (between 50-80 Euro) and have upmarket their rooms.
And they finally all offer free Wi-Fi. Next journey will probably be the Benelux and Germany.