A cloudy Saturday morning in Lucerne, Switzerland set the scene for our second Friendly Team Retreat.
At Friendly, we work completely location-independently and otherwise only meet in our virtual daily team meetings. This has many advantages for us: We can work where we feel happy and enhance our team with good people from all over the world. Joint coffee breaks are usually out of the question.
The moment when four of us stood at the jetty was therefore a special one. Kathrin welcomed the team with goodie bags and 1st class upgrades for the MS Diamant, so we could cruise with the best view over Lake Lucerne.
Thereby we enjoyed coffee ☕ and croissants 🥐 in typical Swiss fashion and joked about the fact that Joey, who works from Hungary, really exists. After all, we knew him (except for Stefan, who met Joey last year for Friendly Retreat No. 1) only from television.
We took the Hinterbergen cable car up to the Rigi, still known locally as the “Queen of the Mountains”. With the first cog railroad in Europe, the Rigi was the most popular mountain in Europe 200 years ago. One of the first famous tourists there was the young poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1775. He noted in his diary: “And all around the glory of the world.”
We could convince ourselves of the breathtaking view on the hike “path of natural treasures”. Almost kitschy, luckily the clouds were still there.
After a steep climb, on which we were preoccupied with the question of why the alpine cows do not fall from the slopes, we treated ourselves to a lunch break: with cervelats from the grill, Swiss cheese and chocolate bananas, which warmly reminded Lukas of his childhood.
After another hour on the panoramic hiking trail, we reached the Mineral Bath & Spa Rigi Kaltbad, built by the Swiss star architect Mario Botta. We spent two hours carefree relaxing in the water…
drank a “Herrgöttli” (merci Lukas for this delightful term 😅)…
… before we took the cable car back down to the lake, accompanied by good humor and Stefan’s background music, and let the evening come to a culinary end in the garden restaurant of the Seehotel Gotthard.
The personal exchange did us all good, and that’s why our retreats are an integral part of our company culture.
The bill, please!
In the spirit of our open startup philosophy, we would like to show last but not least what we have let the day together cost us. All expenses for the team retreats are covered by Friendly for our employees.
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