Recently I went to Prague for one week of training and found out that both meanings of the word were true.

Last month from Oct. 10-17, I together with one colleague from work and a team of colleagues from two other agencies, went to Prague in the Czech Republic to attend a one  week training on Foreign Investments. The training was organized by CzechInvest, which is the agency in charge of business development and the promotion of foreign investments for the Czech Republic. The Czech’s have been very successful in attracting foreign investors and this agency has been in the lead of that. Our purpose for being there was to try and gain from their experience and see if we could apply some of their knowledge to our situation in Albania.

This whole training was geared more for our national foreign investment promotion agency than for the one I work for, but nonetheless we learned some very valuable things which were very useful in any agency or organization.

After our daily trainings, which ended around 5 PM, we would go out in the city and look at buildings as well as try to do some shopping. And in fact we would end up most of the time doing shopping, which could be easily explained by the fact that majority of our group of 9 people were girls! As you already should know, girls love to shop, and that is true in any culture…including mine! It’s one of those ’Transcultural’ truths that theologians and philosophers talk about (lol)! The rest of the time we would go out and eat and enjoy the
city.

The weather was relatively cold, especially considering the fact that when I left Tirana, Albania I was in short sleeves and you couldn’t help but wear your winter jacket in Prague. Nonetheless, Prague was a wonderful city and I truly enjoyed the opportunity to visit some of the old sites, like the Old Town Square, the Old Town Hall, Charles’ Bridge, The Monument of John Huss, Church of St. Nicholas, the Jewish Town, and several other places which were all awesome things to look at.

Hope that each one of you is doing well and in good health..

Best regards,
Elvis