Zug is a wonderous fairytale of a little city on Zug Lake surrounded by Alps about 50 kilometers from Zurich Switzerland.
I had accepted the job to head up IT for the European division of a company based in Zug. I was living in Sweden near the manufacturing facility. There was a monthly leadership meeting in Zug where the managers from each of the nine countries we sold in, the heads of manufacturing, logistics, HR, Finance, and now IT would gather.
Being new to traveling in foreign countries, and speaking only English, the idea of making my first trip to Zug to attend my first meeting with my colleagues was quite stressful. The trip to Zug would start with a short flight from Jonkoping Sweden to Copenhagen. Copenhagen to Zurich, then a train arriving at Zug at midnight.
But I was in luck. Three of my coworkers would be making the trip from Jonkoping and I was invited to travel with them. Problem solved. I’d be with experienced multilingual travelers. No worries.
Except two days before departure, my would-be travelling companions said they had to travel to Germany that day and would meet me in Zug. Once again, I’d be making the trip alone. Once again I was stressed.
But the trip couldn’t have been smoother. Each leg was a non-event. With the train station part of the airport in Zurich, it was an easy transition. Finding my train to Zug wasn’t too hard and once in Zug, I managed to head in the right direction for the two-block walk to the Hotel on the first try.
The next morning, I joined some colleagues who were staying at the same hotel, for a stroll along the lake to the meeting site. We had breakfast and chatted, but my three would-be travelling companions, one from Belgium, two from Sweden, had not yet arrived.
It wasn’t until we were about 90 minutes into the meeting that the three arrived, oddly with their suitcases still in tow. Arriving in Zurich, they got on the wrong train. Even worse, the train was an express (read non-stop) to Milan, Italy. They had no choice but to go along for the ride and then catch a train back to Zurich. Worse yet, the return train was a “local” making multiple stops as it made its way back to Zurich, where they still had to find the correct train to Zug. The detour took nearly nine hours and as they arrived in Zug after the start time, they came straight to the meeting from the train station.
I owe a big Thank You to these three as they set the bar for travel screwups pretty high. I found all of my travel after that, no matter where or how complicated the route, to be significantly less stressful.
