On Day 4, we headed out to meet the CEO of Pannon, Anders Jensen. Pannon is Hungary’s leading telecomm operator and is owned by Telenor.

Pannon has a very unique corporate headquarter in that there are no cubicles in the entire building. No one has a desk. They have lockers where they put their belongings each day. Every employee is issued a laptop and a mobile phone and therefore is expected to go meet with people face to face throughout rather than send emails back and forth. It is a very interesting concept and seems to have served Pannon very well.

Anders told us of Pannon’s creed. “Growth comes from truly understanding the needs of people to drive relevant change.”

That night we headed out to one of the famous Budapest thermal baths, Rudas. Rudas was built around 1550 and has two large exterior pools and several interior pools of varying degrees. There were a lot of old Hungarian men playing chess at the outside pools.

The interior pools had steam rooms, and warm and cold pools. The cold pools almost made my blood freeze it was so cold. I can only imagine how cold it must be for the Finns who participate in the sauna in the dead of winter.

Dinner involved goulash, of course.