Welcome to Galba House
Summer 2025. Time for the annual teambuilding + birthday celebration combo. This year’s location? Galba House in Brachkovtsi, near Elena.
The setup:
- A house with a massive pool (essential)
- A barbecue area bigger than most apartments (priorities)
- Mountains everywhere (for the views)
- Offroad jeeps (for the chaos)
- Zero cell signal (forced unplugging)
Perfect.
The Pool Situation
First order of business: Test the pool. For safety. Obviously.
The pool testing protocol included:
- Jumping in immediately without checking the temperature
- Discovering it was actually perfect
- Spending the next three hours there
- Pretending we came here to “bond” and not just swim
- Someone trying to work poolside (nice try, but no)
The pool became the unofficial meeting room. All important decisions were made there. Planning? Pool. Discussions? Pool. Avoiding responsibilities? Definitely pool.
Offroad Jeep Adventures
Someone had the brilliant idea to rent offroad jeeps. “It’ll be fun!” they said. “Team building!” they said.
What it actually was: A trust exercise nobody asked for.
The Jeep Experience:
The Drivers: Overly confident, possibly too excited about the terrain.
The Passengers: Questioning every life choice that led to this moment.
The jeeps handled the rough terrain like champions. The passengers handled it… less gracefully. There was screaming. There was laughter. There was someone gripping the door handle so hard they might have left fingerprints.
But here’s the thing: By the end, everyone wanted another round. Fear turned into fun. Trust was built. Also, the adrenaline helped with the barbecue appetite later.
Everyone Becomes a Chef
Barbecue time meant everyone participated. And by everyone, we mean everyone.
The kitchen/grill area turned into controlled chaos:
- Too many cooks (proving the saying wrong)
- Surprisingly good coordination
- Someone appointed themselves “grill master” (self-proclaimed, but we let it slide)
- Others on salad duty, prep duty, “moral support” duty
- Teamwork that would make any agile stand-up jealous
The food was incredible. Partially because it was good, mostly because we made it together, entirely because we were starving from all the pool and jeep activities.
The Gift Ceremony
After dinner, it was time for the birthday gifts. Codexio turning another year older meant presents for the team.
This year: Fancy new t-shirts for everyone.
Not the usual branded tees. These were nice. Stylish cuts. Quality fabric. The kind you’d actually want to wear outside of work events.
Everyone was thrilled. The shirts were passed around. People tried them on. Compliments were exchanged. The vibe was great.
And then someone said it:
“These are so nice! When are we getting the Codexio shirts?”
The Great T-Shirt Blindness Incident
Let’s pause here.
The shirts they were wearing—the ones they’d just been complimenting—had the Codexio logo on them.
Not small. Not hidden. Right there. Clearly visible.
But nobody noticed.
It took a solid five minutes of confusion before someone pointed it out:
“Uh… guys? These ARE the Codexio shirts.”
Silence.
Then laughter.
Then more laughter.
Then someone trying to defend themselves: “The logo is subtle!”
It wasn’t. It really, really wasn’t.
The Aftermath:
- Multiple people checking their shirts in disbelief
- “Oh… OH.”
- “I genuinely didn’t see it.”
- “The design is so nice I forgot it was branded.”
- “This is going in the newsletter, isn’t it?”
Yes. Yes, it is.
The shirts were such high quality that people forgot they were company merch. Which is either a compliment to the design or a testament to collective selective blindness. Probably both.
The Evening Wind-Down
As the sun set, the team gathered for photos, stories, and the inevitable “remember when you asked for the Codexio shirts you were already wearing” jokes.
The energy was perfect. Pool-tired, food-satisfied, jeep-adventured, merch-confused. Everyone in their new shirts (which they now acknowledged as Codexio shirts).
What Made It Special
Galba House 2025 proved a few things:
- A pool solves most problems
- Offroad jeeps are terrifying and fun in equal measure
- Cooking together creates better team bonding than any workshop
- Quality merch is so good people forget it’s merch
- Nobody pays attention to details when they’re having fun
- The best team events are the ones where people actually relax
The Legacy
Summer 2025 will be remembered for:
- The pool that never got old
- The jeeps that tested everyone’s courage
- The barbecue that brought everyone together
- The t-shirts that were invisible until they weren’t
And most importantly: The moment an entire team asked for branded shirts while wearing branded shirts.
That’s the kind of collective obliviousness that defines a truly relaxed, genuinely fun team event. When people are so comfortable and enjoying themselves that they forget to notice the obvious.
Mission accomplished.
Want to join a team that gives such nice shirts you forget they’re work shirts? Check our open positions — observation skills optional.
P.S. - The shirts are still great. We’re still wearing them. We now know they’re Codexio shirts.
