2026 Workation, Part Two: Raids, Rafts and Bragging Rights

Day Three:

Morning Debrief

Day three opened the way day two had ended: laptops open, coffee in hand, back in the workshop room for round two. This was the shorter half of the session, built to close the loop rather than open new ground: a recap of the main topics from the day before, the lessons that had actually landed, and, more usefully, the practical takeaways each team could carry straight back into their day-to-day work. The five team captains ran back through what their groups had landed on, the ideas got a final sense-check, and the room worked through what a genuinely useful first week with Claude looks like in practice: start with a real task rather than an experiment, be specific about the output you want, and treat the first draft as a strong starting point rather than a finished one. A written follow-up went round afterward so nobody had to rely on memory alone, and by mid-morning the workshop was, officially, done. Two mornings well spent.

With the laptops shut, Lake Längsee got its second wind. Volleyball got going on the shore, the kind of scrappy, everyone's-welcome game that doesn't much care who's actually good at volleyball, while others slipped into the water for a swim or simply staked out a patch of grass and did nothing at all, which after a full morning of AI theory was arguably the most advanced skill on display. It was exactly the kind of unhurried midday the abbey grounds seem built for.

Storming Hochosterwitz

Then, after lunch, the raiding began. For a company called Vyking, an afternoon assault on a medieval fortress felt almost obligatory, and Hochosterwitz Castle obliged right back. The castle sits on top of a dolomite outcrop that rises more than 170 metres straight out of the valley floor, visible for miles around, and getting to the top means climbing a 620-metre path through fourteen separate gates, each one built with its own trick for slowing an attacker down. Local legend has it the castle has never been taken, and that no invading force ever fought its way past the fourth gate. The Vyking crew made it rather further than that, through all fourteen and out onto the top ramparts, where the reward was one of the best views in Carinthia and a very real sense of just how much effort medieval defenders put into ruining someone's day.

From one fortress to an entire fortified town. Friesach is generally reckoned to be the oldest town in Carinthia, first mentioned in a document from the year 860, and it still carries the layout to prove it: a Romanesque parish church, a hilltop castle ruin looking down over the rooftops, medieval town walls, and the kind of old town square that makes you forget which century you're standing in. A guided tour took the group through the churches, the walls and a couple of the best viewpoints, and, in the way these things always seem to go, the day's most memorable encounter turned out not to be with any of it, but with a small herd of decidedly unbothered local goats who had clearly decided the medieval walls were now theirs.

The town also still has its medieval Pranger, the old pillory where wrongdoers were once locked up for public humiliation, and it did not stay empty for long. James, our Head of Operations, was duly clamped in by the neck and wrists, and Andrea, our HR manager, was photographed above him, mid-swing, wearing the expression of someone finally getting to close a ticket. We are assured it was improvised medieval theatre and not a new performance review process. Anyone who has ever been late with their timesheet may want to look at the photo and reflect.

Wednesday Night at Ernie's

Any sensible account of day three would end at the chocolate factory. This one can't, because a sizeable chunk of the team had other plans, and those plans were Ernie's, the local nightclub, where Wednesday night went on for a great deal longer than anyone had scheduled. Vykings who had spent the day scaling castle walls turned out to have plenty left in the tank for the dancefloor, and they used every bit of it. Special mentions are owed to Milenna and Milos, who set the standard early and held it, and to Ivan, who at some point in the small hours was completely lost to the music as the DJ worked through a run of 90s old-skool classics. What happened at Ernie's stays at Ernie's, mostly. There were, admittedly, a few slower starts at breakfast and for the Thursday Workshop.

Day Four: EB Workshop and the Battle for the Lake

Day four began back in workshop mode, but with a very different focus and someone new at the front of the room. Vyking's Head of Marketing, Rob led the charge this time, and the subject was employer branding. Split into smaller groups, colleagues worked through what makes Vyking, Vyking: the culture, the day-to-day experience of working here, and how best to put that into words for people who've never set foot in the place. Meanwhile, tucked away from the main group, the filming crew was quietly running Netflix-style one-to-ones. Klaus, Franz Florian sat down to talk through how Vyking was founded, what makes a true Vyking and where they want to take the business next, but the real stars were the team members who followed them into the chair, each giving an honest, unscripted account of what it's really like to work here, material that's a good deal harder to fake than a careers page. Consider this the trailer: the short videos are coming soon to a feed near you. It made for a thoughtful morning, and a useful reminder that the people who best explain a company's culture are usually the ones living it.

Lunch done, the tone shifted sharply. The whole crew was split into four teams, each handed a name, a colour and, apparently, a full identity: Vyking Vandals in red, Paddle Faster: HR Is Coming in navy blue (a name that, after the scenes at the Friesach Pranger, needed no explanation), the Wet Bandits in grey, and the Vyking Torpedos. The Wet Bandits had an early edge in the intimidation stakes, being led into battle by Klaus and Heli, the founders themselves, which is either a huge advantage or a lot of pressure, depending on how you look at it. Alliances were declared, minor trash talk exchanged, and it became clear fairly quickly that this was not going to be a gentle afternoon.

The Vyking Games Begin

What followed was a genuinely inventive run of challenges: a rope-rigged, land-based take on Mario Kart, cans sent flying by slingshot, water-cannon duels that left absolutely nobody dry, and a run of SUP-board activities that tested balance considerably more than expected. And there was more than pride at stake. Every challenge won earned a team materials for the final build to come, inflatables, planks of wood, lengths of rope and a handful of ties, so each round was really a raid for supplies, and the teams knew it. The four crews threw themselves at every event with a competitiveness that would have surprised anyone who'd only met them across a Teams call, and by the end of the afternoon one team had plundered noticeably more than the others. The Wet Bandits, living up to the name, were sitting on the biggest pile of raft-building materials on the beach.

The Final Battle: Race of the Rafts

The day's last challenge was also its biggest: build a raft, from scratch, with whatever you'd managed to win over the afternoon, and get it on the water and race to the finish line. Each team had its haul of inflatables, wood, rope and ties, plus a deliberately loose set of instructions on how it might all go together and which knots might, in theory, keep it that way. The rest was down to them. Four teams, four builds, a great deal of debate about knots, and, against what felt like reasonable odds, every single raft actually floated. Whether that says more about Vyking's engineering talent or the judges' generosity is a question best left unanswered, but the sight of four hand-built rafts, crewed by four thoroughly soaked teams, drifting across the lake was as good a way as any to close out the programme.

There could only be one winner, though, and it was the Wet Bandits. Led by Klaus and Heli, they had out-raided everyone else for materials all afternoon, built the best boat on the beach with them, and raced it across Längsee to a thoroughly deserved victory. The founders of the company beating the company at its own team-building challenge is either a heartwarming story of leadership by example or a governance issue, and the Bandits have made it very clear they're going with the first one. They take the bragging rights for another year. Vandals, Torpedos and the HR-fearing paddlers of team Navy Blue: all present, all afloat, all considerably wetter than they'd started the day, and all already plotting for next year.

Friday was departure day, and the abbey emptied much as it had filled on Monday: in waves, over the course of the day, with bags over shoulders and long journeys ahead. Cars to the airport, trains through the mountains, flights heading off in a dozen different directions, and by the weekend every one of the 38 Vykings was safely back home, a little more tired than when they left, with a lot more photos and at least one story about a goat.

A Week Well Spent

Not a bad week's work. The ideas from the workshop room will show up in how we work for months to come. The rest will show up in the way a message lands differently once you've built a raft with the person who sent it.

Thanks are due to Stift St. Georgen for being our home on the lake, to everyone behind the scenes who organised, planned and quietly fixed things all week, to the filming crew who captured it all, and above all to every Vyking who made the journey. The Wet Bandits hold the title. Everyone else has a year to plan. See you at Workation 2027.