A couple of weeks ago, gentleman planner Paul H. Colman and I were lucky enough to find ourselves speaking at a conference in Bucharest, thanks to an invite that emerged in a roundabout way from our APG project a month or two back.

Costin (doyen of the Romanian planning scene, novice driver and all-round nice-guy) picked us up from the airport on our arrival and delivered us – in time-honoured conference fashion – to an enormous, soulless hotel on the edge of the city; a building that we weren't to leave for forty-eight hours.

After being refused access to the hotel restaurant on the grounds that we were wearing shorts, and given that we hadn't really prepared too much in advance we worked late into the night debating the pros and cons of sales promotion (yes, we weren't too sure why they asked us to speak either), and in-between Paul recalling tales of terror on snowy peaks we finally arrived at the theme of the talk – "why sales promotions could be the crack cocaine of marketing" (it really was rather late by then).

Aside from a Romanian marketing title trying to report that 'W+K are creating a campaign to promote crack cocaine' (a firm word in the right ear and Costin put a stop to that) the talk seemed to go well – at least, people laughed in the right places – and afterwards we were promptly installed on a panel to debate the issues of the day, complete with in-ear translation systems – a bit like a United Nations of sales promotion.

Paul saw it as an opportunity to showcase his language skills and didn't want to use the translator, but after a full and frank discussion around the fact that conversational Romanian is very different to business Romanian, he reluctantly relented.

The next day, on more familiar ground, we ran a workshop for agency-types and their friends about how we do things at Wiedens. Again, preparation was an issue, but as our fool-proof four-point introduction was in place we couldn't help but be excited about how the day would progress.

Unfortunately, 'Colman's gags' didn't quite have the desired effect, and frankly it was further downhill from points two to four. Luckily, six hours later, we had managed to (hopefully) turn it around and much debate was had around the role of planning in the modern communications landscape, and aside from our shorts getting us in trouble again (this time with a Romanian environmentalist/fashionista), a good day was had.

That evening, we were taken out on the town by the team. After pizza we headed to The People's Palace, a building both devastatingly impressive and terribly depressing at once.

We partied on the roof, marveled at the cityscape, enjoyed a few drinks, and took great pleasure in spending some quality down-time with our genial hosts.

L-R – Vlad, Alex, Elena and Costin (apologies to those who we don't have photos of).

Lovely, talented people. Thanks for the invite guys.