Today we started out with a company visit to Wargaming. The building was really cool. It was the tallest building in Nicosia for a while but now there is one building taller than it. The building also had a very cool shape. The tour started in the basement. Down there they have gyms, a spa, access to personal trainers, and many other amenities. Employees are allowed to use all of these as long as they also get their work completed. Wargaming has a really strong opinion that employees should maintain a work-life harmony as opposed to a work-life balance. I feel like this is really important. It’s good for work to not be your whole life but also to not just go out all of the time. In my opinion though, I think that life and work should be slightly more separate. I don’t think that people should relax and spend a lot of their free time in the same building that they work.
After showing us their amenities they brought us up to the 13th floor to show us the view. You could see most of the city from this, it looked so cool. It seems weird to me how short all the buildings are in the city and how people here think they are super tall. For me though I’m used to seeing really tall buildings. For example, I have been on the 100th floors of buildings, and I go to NYC all of the time. Also in college I lived on a floor that’s higher than the tallest building in Nicosia; I lived on the 16th floor of towers and the tallest building here is around 14 floors. We then went down to the 12th floor to a conference room. We learned all about the company and their processes.
After wargaming we went to the University of Nicosia. First we had a more engineering based class. We were working in groups with our groups from before traveling and 1-2 students from the university who were doing this for extra credit. We learned a little bit about what we were going to be working on and the equations we need. Then we got into the groups and were told to find the carbon footprint of us coming here. As we were working though one of the university students was a little rude and didn’t trust any of the work we did. We ended up not finishing but what we did up to that point was correct.
Then we went to a more business based class that was called teamwork and collaboration. We were just in random groups of 7-8 people but the group I was in only had 6. We did a bunch of different projects and assignments working together and it was somewhat fun. I like that we were able to work with students from the university. It was a good way to get a new perspective and talk with people from the country that we are visiting. You get to learn about the culture and what it’s like being a young adult here. They also recommended a couple places to go and they were fun.
After the college we went on a tour of the old side of Nicosia. Demetra, the queen, was our tour guide again. She explained how the buildings differed in they were made based on if they were designed by the Ottomans and the British. The British made their doors taller with open balconies. The Ottomans though had short doors because there were guards roaming the streets on horseback and since the doors were so short the guards would have to get off the horse to see inside. They couldn’t just ride through the door, giving the people inside more time to figure out what they were going to do. The Ottomans also made enclosed balconies so the guards weren’t able to see if the women went on it. This made it so the women can go outside, and get fresh air without having to worry about getting caught. We then walked by the archbishop’s palace. We couldn’t go in because it was after hours and he was leaving. It was funny because as we were crossing the street a car was waiting for us to cross. It was apparently the archbishop. Demetra told us that a bunch of the buildings were made in the 10th century. It’s so cool that buildings that old are still completely intact. I love how all over Cyprus they have old buildings in monuments that no one can touch but are still allowed to be visited. We were by the green line, which was a line established by the EU to separate the Turkish Cypriots and the Greek Cypriots. On the Greek side all boys between the ages of 17 and 19 have to serve on the line. They are allowed to go to college afterwards but it’s required of them to do this first. This just seems so weird to me. I know that I don’t want to serve in an army and it being a requirement just sounds so unusual. I was really excited to go to college after high school, but having to wait on college to serve, I wouldn’t be happy about it. After this we went to dinner in Nicosia at a place that Bill Clinton ate in, which is cool.
