Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

Business trends

Table hopping

Business breakfast

Warsaw Café 6 ½ (6 ½ Zurawia Steet, Warsaw 8am-11pm, tel. or ) is just about good enough for a pleasant informal business lunch – it combines a restaurant with a fast-service bar, so it can certainly be recommended to business people in a hurry – and it offers a wide array of soups, salads and sandwiches. On the other hand, it is perfect for a quick breakfast meeting with good breads and fruit and not too crowded – even if this is not yet a breakfast-meeting kinda town. Café 6 ½ also delivers platters to your business, and does custom catering for special events.

Business lunch

Lisbon For more than 25 years Pap’Acorda (57–59 Rua da Atalaia, tel. ) has been a Lisbon institution serving highly admired local fare for reasonable prices and has (on the whole) resisted the whims of fashion. Now that the scrubbed-up Bairro Alto area is officially up-and-coming, the restaurant, with its signature lobster and shrimp dishes, is even more popular than ever with the business crowd and tourists alike. While the restaurant is open for dinner Monday-Saturday 8pm-11.30pm, the lunch menu (Tuesday-Saturday 12.30-2.30pm) is just as good and far cheaper. Just remember Pap’Acorda is closed Monday lunchtime.

Business dinner

Athens Spondi (5 Pyrronos Street, Varnavas Square 11, 636 Pagrati, tel. ) has now been voted for the past six consecutive years as the best restaurant in Greece by local judges. As you would expect, the restaurant uses local ingredients – fish and lamb – and has an extensive wine list with more than 400 wines. Having been converted from a neoclassical house there is marble aplenty and a variety of impressive stone-walled dining rooms to choose from. Unsurprisingly at this time of year the tables in the gardens and terraces are a popular choice. Spondi is also open throughout the summer – not all Athens restaurants are – seven nights a week. Just remember when you’re treating your colleagues to that Chateau Lafite that all Greek restaurants add a 13% service charge to the bill and it is still customary to leave the waiter an additional 10% tip on top.

A good night’s sleep in… Frankfurt

Frankfurt’s ultra high-concept design hotel, The Pure, (, the-pure.de) has been getting the big thumbs-up even from people who can’t read phrases such as ‘oasis full of energy and underlined by visual orange effects’ without giggling. While many might enjoy the high-ceilinged parquet-floored bedrooms and ‘partially glazed’ bathtubs, business travellers at this time of year might be impressed with the decked patio, resplendent with ‘trick fountains’, ‘fat boys’ – we’re guessing a type of furniture rather than well-fed bankers – and bamboo. What better place to work, especially with free wi-fiand, even better, a bunch of laptops available for guests?

Shock horror: between meetings throughout Germany

If you have a free couple of hours in one of Germany’s key business cities in July and August then you might be able to indulge in a guilty pleasure without any of your colleagues ever finding out. The 21st International Festival of Science-Fiction, Horror and Thriller invades cinemas in Munich (24 July – 1 August) before heading to Frankfurt (1-8 August) and Berlin and Hamburg (15-22 August). Check out fantasyfilmfest.com or tel.

for the line up. On the other hand, time-strapped fans of horror and thrills might equally be entertained by a quick stroll through any of the parks in Germany’s big cities this month. All are open dawn to dusk and we are fast approaching the climax of the nude sunbathing season. Be afraid, be very afraid.

The rainforest in Spain

If you’re between meetings in Madrid or just fancy a break from the city’s oppressively cool bars and design hotels this month, check out the rather exquisite and expansive jungle in the main Atocha train station (round the corner from the Prado Museum). Architect Rafael Moneo’s jungle exhibit covers 4000-square feet and it features more than 7000 plants and 250 species from an array of different tropical environments. There are also ponds of fish, amphibians and reptiles – yes, those are turtles, not ashtrays. Obviously it’s hot (the temperature is kept at a constant 23 celsius) but it is also relaxing and possibly the only swathe of rain forest where you are seconds away from an international newspaper kiosk and where wi-fi is freely available.

A new wrinkle

While linen might be the most comfortable material to wear this time of year, you only have to make the shortest trip wearing it to look like Bob Geldof, which is terrible if you’re en route to an important presentation and even worse if you’re a woman. However, you can now relax because travel clothing company Rohan has just brought out a revolutionary wrinkle-free Travel Linen ™ range of shirts, blouses, trousers and suits for men and women.

Rohan apparently has cracked the age-old comfort-versus-appearance dilemma by ‘introducing sophisticated modern fibres to the fabric blend.’ What sophisticated modern fibres, you might gasp? Well, Travel Linen contains, er, 45% polyester, a material hitherto unappreciated for its cooling properties. Are the Rohan people onto something huge here or is this the dumbest idea since the fur bikini? Decide for yourself: www.rohan.co.uk

Oslo’s once run-down shipyards have gone posh and pricey

It is now 25 years since work began on turning the shipyards and workshops of Akers Mekaniske Verksted in Oslo into a classy residential and leisure complex around Aker Brygge, which meshes 19th-century industrial brick buildings and modernist glass and chrome. Now plans are well underway to create equally impressive residential and entertainment schemes in nearby Tjuvholmen, which has an even better view. Summer is definitely the best time to visit the area for a stroll, a drink or – if you have a generously-sized expense account – a meal. The most highly regarded restaurant for a business meal is Lofoten Fiskerestaurant (Stranden 75 Aker Brygge, tel. . In good weather, tables are set up on an outdoor terrace lined with flowering plants. Menus change according to the available catch and there are a few choices for non meat-eaters. Bars are plentiful and pretty cool, but nearly all have aneurism-inducing prices.

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