Bazi & Sissi on Tour

Bazi is Bavarian for "rascal".

Sissi is the name exclusively given to an 1837 Munich born girl from the Bavarian Royal Family. It's the endeared version of Elisabeth (i.e. English = Liz) and in 1867 she was to be crowned Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary when she married Emperor Franz Josef I of Austria.
 
Sissi's life is the subject of a series of cult German films and I suspect she is the best known female person in Germany. Everyone knows who you mean simply by saying the word "Sissi" (pronounced slowly and drawn out Si---Si).
 
Sissi had no interest in the royal life but was forced down that route and while she came to love her Franz, the Royal Court of Vienna made her life hell - she was a Bavarian country and nature-loving Mädel at heart. And so it wasn't surprising she developed all sorts of health problems, outwardly physical things such as asthma but probably more mental.
 
Sissi spent as much time as she could, travelling in the Med to "cure" her health problems and is especially well known for her trips to Greece and those who have visited the Casino above Corfu town will have seen the museum full of Sissi memorabilia.
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Batsi,  I hadn't heard of before this postcard was delivered to my desk at work probably a week or two after Nigel (Bazi) and his wife Liz (Sissi) had written it from the Greek holiday island of Andros. They weren't there for the air.
 
I particularly want to bookmark this card as I have been having dreadful problems recounting exactly when and where Nigel and I started the Munich episode of our working & personal friendship.
 
I had first met Nigel around 1985 when he had been sent to rescue me in a difficult situation. I had found the Manager of a pub & restaurant, "misappropriating" company funds. The Area Operations Manager told me on the phone to take the keys to the building while he found someone to come and open the doors. And Nigel an assistant manager in the big unit at Down Grange, Basingstoke was sent down to the south coast and to save my day.
 
In the course of the next few days, we got to spend quite some time together, and I liked his "style". Shortly afterwards I was looking to recruit auditors but wanted people with fieldwork experience and not accountants - I didn't like traditional auditing and was determined to build a function that in the cliché word of that time "added value" and didn't simply count beans.
 
And so it was that Nigel joined my team, taking him into a whole new world, far from anything he had done before. I gave him the area of South East England and the lad from Manchester settled with his wife in Eccles, the place near Maidstone!
 
And as I was slowly pushed up a ladder, Nigel was on the rung below looking after me. Without him and a couple of other lieutenants, I wouldn't have even been able to find the ladder.
 
And when the day came that I was told I was to work in Munich, I knew immediately who I needed. But to get him to Munich? An advertising campaign was started. Sadly I can't be 100% sure of the timetable and don't have any photographic records, so I am trying here to document from my written diary, what I think were the dates:
 
14th August met Nigel at my office in Uxbridge to present the plan
15th August visited Nigel doing a training course at Gatwick Manor Hotel
16th August took Nigel and Liz to dinner at the Leather Bottle restaurant in Cobham
19th August I went on two weeks holiday
4th September Review with Nigel
11th September flew with Nigel to Munich to show him the operations
14th September we flew back
18th September Nigel & Liz went on two weeks holiday
6th October shows “Liz 1:00 Gatwick” but I stayed in the UK. So, I guess the job had been done and Liz was going out for her first trip to see her husband’s new workplace.