Under the head­ing of Land­scapes and Pas­sion, the first-cat­e­go­ry qual­i­fiers for the train­ing-trip com­pe­ti­tion trav­elled to Mex­i­co for nine days on 29 April!

Besides the explo­ration of Mex­i­co City – with around 22 mil­lion res­i­dents, one of the largest cities in the world – anoth­er high­light of the trip was an out­ing in a hot-air bal­loon dur­ing which the par­tic­i­pants were able to enjoy the break­ing dawn from airy heights and take in the impres­sive sun and moon pyra­mid locat­ed in the pre-Aztec city ruins of Teoti­huacán from above. And those who could­n’t get enough were lat­er even able to climb the pyra­mids and enjoy the fan­tas­tic views across the des­ig­nat­ed UNESCO World Her­itage site of the Avenue of the Dead. The par­tic­i­pants will prob­a­bly nev­er for­get these unique impressions!

Oth­er high­lights undoubt­ed­ly includ­ed the joint paint­ing work­shop and the evening meal in Latu­vi to which around 700 res­i­dents – in oth­er words, the entire vil­lage – turned up to wel­come the vis­i­tors from Europe and dur­ing which the day was brought to an enjoy­able close with music and dancing.

And it was of course absolute­ly nec­es­sary to sam­ple the region­al del­i­ca­cies on this exclu­sive train­ing trip because there were many culi­nary delights to be dis­cov­ered, for instance, dur­ing the excur­sion to the coun­try mar­ket or the tast­ing of Pulqe, the tra­di­tion­al agave juice!

The snow­capped vol­cano of Popocate­petl, the ‘City Of Angels’ Puebla, the impres­sive mon­u­ments of Oax­a­ca and the ‘White Moun­tain’ – the pre­his­toric city of Monte Albán (for­mer­ly the spir­i­tu­al cen­tre for the Zapotec and Mix­tec peo­ples): besides div­ing into the geo­graph­i­cal and cul­tur­al wealth of the coun­try, the 17-strong inter­na­tion­al team trav­el­ling with Roland Förster, the com­pa­ny’s CEO, were giv­en the wel­come oppor­tu­ni­ty to exchange expe­ri­ences across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders and join exten­sive and enrich­ing dis­cus­sions in colour­ful and exot­ic surroundings!

Towards the end of the trip, the par­tic­i­pants were able to relax on the beach, swim in the Pacif­ic, go over recent expe­ri­ences and recharge their bat­ter­ies. The atmos­phere was again excel­lent – par­tic­u­lar­ly in view of the very friend­ly recep­tion afford­ed by the peo­ple in Mexico!

This unique trip will have cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ed the par­tic­i­pants with a moti­va­tion­al boost with the result that they’ll prob­a­bly put in even more effort for the next com­pe­ti­tion. The teams will also ben­e­fit from their addi­tion­al activ­i­ties so that next time even more busi­ness part­ners will be able to enjoy these exclu­sive enrich­ing experiences!

We’ve put togeth­er the most beau­ti­ful impres­sions of the trip for you in an on-line pho­to album.