Semester at Sea | First Field Lab: Civitavecchia, Italy

As I mentioned in my previous post, the field labs required for every course are essential to the curriculum of Semester at Sea. They are especially helpful for international business classes because we actually get to see how business is done across borders. My first field lab of the semester was the first day in our first port.

When we toured the port in Civitavecchia, Italy I saw multiple facets of business that are vital to the Italian economy. Cruise ships full of vacationing tourists (or hardworking students!); ferries packed with cars to be dispersed all over the world; thousands of containers filled with goods to be exported; fishing boats adorned by hand-stitched nets; the railway that connects Civitavecchia to the main railway of Italy; and many pieces of machinery working to expand this already booming and very essential port.

The port town is a blend of old and new cultures and of classical architecture and modern industrialization. Our guide did reveal that Italy is slow to modernize and the people are very much stuck in the old culture. Yet we saw apartments with solar panels set on cobblestone streets with laundry on the balcony to dry. 😉 The buildings and apartments in Italy are so colorful and unique compared to the suburbs in the US that are the same houses of the same color in the same location. We were told that the reason the houses are so colorful is so that the fishermen could see their homes when they left and returned from the sea.

The first part of our field lab was spent at the fruit and forest terminal inside the port. The interior of the terminal smelled of cardboard and unripe bananas with a splash of gasoline and metal. It looked like a Costco for bananas! The walls were lined with boxes upon boxes of bananas and I had no idea how delicate of care bananas require. The manager of the terminal trains her employees to smell a yellow banana amongst the thousands in the storage areas because if there is a ripe banana in the box it can contaminate they entire box. Who knew?! It takes about two years for an employee to master this skill so she was very adamant that it is in her best interest to keep her employees with her since two years of training is a large expense for the business. We learned so much from her about doing business across borders.

The second leg of our field lab was spent at an organic farm about 45 minutes away by bus. The farmer told us when we arrived that he used to run a conventional farm and switched to organic in 1999. The gate said “AgriResort” and we found that there is a bed and breakfast on the property and they get a lot of people there for holidays who just went to get away from the hustle and bustle of central Italy. The farm was absolutely stunning and we toured the olive groves and learned about how they do business. They export their olives to a produce company that creates organic olive oil that they sell at the farm. After we toured the olive grove we had a homecooked lunch with fresh produce from the farm! It was the best food I had the whole time I was in Italy. The dining room in the bed and breakfast had two long, handmade wooden tables and chairs and the walls were rock with exposed wooden beams. It was so dreamy . . . and there was a pool!

The most important things I learned from the filed lab experience are: communication is imperative to god business and it is often extremely challenging across borders. The terminal manager mentioned she often has to read between the lines to figure out what the local people are really trying to say. Sharp attention must be paid to changing regulations in other countries if you wish to sell products overseas and she illustrated the strict regulations on GMOs, hormones, and other synthetic modifications and stated that non-EU products are not allowed to come through. Finally, the most important thing I heard during our field lab was that you must take the best aspects of different cultures and combine them to create the most successful business environment for you and your employees.

I am so looking forward to the rest of my field labs on the Voyage! You might have noticed that I am writing this morning from Croatia not Istanbul. We had a slight change of itinerary due to the refuge crisis in Turkey so we are exploring beautiful Croatia for the next five days! Since we were just in Italy we have pretty much been floating and going in circles since we left because Croatia is so close. But at least there were no big waves and we didn’t get sick! The transition from land to sea hasn’t been too bad. It’s funny to watch us all get off the ship and walk around – we don’t walk very straight. Now we have to get a feel for our land-legs since we are so used to our sea-legs!

I have one more post about Italy (our day in Rome) and then I should be all caught up and ready to share about Croatia! I promise my writing will get much better now that I’m feeling well again and caught up on my homework. 😉 We’re off to find a beach – ciao!