This weekend we visited Budapest for a few days. We started off our travels with lunch by St Stephens Basilica, and then wandered down to the parliament building along the river. We took a boat trip down the river and got the see the city as the sun was setting. After our boat trip we went an explored some of the cities most iconic ruin bars. These bars are built into old war torn buildings, and have a labyrinth of different rooms all with different themes and vibes. The next day we walked across the bridge to the Buda side of the city and took a hike up to the liberty statue. After that we went to the fisherman’s bastion and spent some time wandering around and getting a much needed coffee. We passed by a castle on our way to the Gellert thermal baths. The baths are a major part of visiting Budapest, and the natural and thermal water pools have many healing properties to them. We hung out there and relaxed for a bit before we headed back to our AirBnB. We stopped to get some chimney cakes before grabbing dinner at an outdoor restaurant that had pong pong and other games to play. After dinner we headed to an ice bar in which we were the only people there, then we headed back out to discover some more ruin bars. On our last day we finished off with heading to central market to do some souvenirs shopping and grab some food, then we hung out in a park until our flight home.

This week I spent a lot of time doing cost analysis and creating budget for my company. They are a hospitality type of company and I spent majority of the week doing research on eco friendly cleaning products, personal hygiene products, and other amenities. I had to search through a lot of different companies to find ones that were either based in italy or europe, as well as make determinations about which products were actually good for the environment. I spent a lot of time communicating on the phone or over emails with suppliers, and was trying my best to figure out pricing and quantities with people who spoke little English. It was nice to be able to get into some more logistics and the business side of the company as I have spent most of my time coming up with ideas to be more sustainable as well as dealing with B Corp certification requirements.

In class this week we spent a lot of time focusing on the ethicality of certain business situations as well as digging deeper into the concept of why we continue to buy from companies with questionable practices. We mainly focused on Apple and read a case study that talked about the making of iphones and the extremely poor working conditions the Chinese companies that supply the phones have for their employees. It was interesting to discuss whether this is something that Apple needs to be responsible for as they aren’t technically the company that is making the phones. Hearing peoples opinions on the matter was interesting and we also somewhat put it into perspective that Apple could be a special case. I know I personally don’t buy from Nike anymore because of their use of child labor, as well as the horrible treatment their female sponsored athletes get from them. They are an easier company for me to avoid, but with apple it gets to be more difficult as they essentially run the technology world.