The Beginning of Daniel's Summer Travels (Work that is)

So I'm finally going to contribute to our blog above and beyond reviewing what Courtney wrote and making a few comments. I'm actually going to "highlight" the work trips I have taken over the summer. "Highlight" means the better parts of them, which means sight seeing and only a few presentation/work pictures.

For this post I'll start with my May trip to Europe which included a few countries I hadn't been to yet. I went to Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, and Turkey. Lithuania and Turkey were the new counties and in Belgium I went to Antwerp and I hadn't been there before. I was fortunate not to have to do this trip alone. I was accompanied by Nathan Larsen a great colleague at work and a friend. Here are some pictures of the trip.

Our first stop was Riga Latvia. We presented to about 100 people and poor Nathan had the translator questioning him during his presentation about our Life Rewards Plan. Mind you Nathan is the most knowledgeable person in the company on our compensation plan. Looking back we laugh about it. We were only in Riga for about 16 hours before we drove to Klaipeda Lithuania so we didn't see anything other than eating in a cool restaurant with typical Latvian food.

This was the meeting in Klaipeda. we had around 700 people there and the translation for Nathan went much smoother. He also made some tweaks so he didn't have the same issues.

After the meeting they took us to a restaurant that was probably similar to Thanksgiving Point, restaurant, gardens, and many other things to look at. Nathan is at the left and the cars to the right were all from the WWII time. There were some military vehicles there as well. Pretty cool.

One of the things they touted about this restaurant was the home brewed beer. They brought out the two 5 foot tall tubes full of beer you see in this picture and it was self serve in the huge mugs from there.

I'm sure you know we aren't trying the beer. They knew from my first visit (2009) that I don't drink alcohol so they ordered an alcohol free drink that looks like beer and they say tastes similar to it. I double and triple checked and they assured me there was no alcohol. It didn't smell or taste like it so we drank up. It wasn't bad but also not great.

Then they took us to the popular summer beach area. We walked down this road that is full of shops and really a pretty cool looking place. It was still pretty dead because it's not that warm in May that far north. The beach was actually very nice, good sand, and plenty of beach space as you can see from the second picture.

Our next stop was Belgium. Francis and Dina were most kind and drove us around Antwerp after we flew in and we ate at a VERY expensive restaurant. I about croaked when I paid the bill. It was 215 Euro ($310) without the tip for four people. Anyway the next day they took us to a town called Brugges. It is a quaint and beautiful place. Francis grew up there so he was telling us about everything we walked past. We then saw the horse drawn carriage rides so we asked where they started. We took a carriage ride and the first half or so of the tour it took us past the same places we had just walked and Francis had told us about. We laughed every time after the guide spoke. Roughly the only additional info we got from the guide was how tall some of the buildings were. We called Francis the tour guide the rest of our time together. It was pretty funny. Here are some other pictures of the beautiful place.

All the trees are leaning to the right because the wind always blows that way in the little community. The door i'm standing in below can be seen in the background above. It was really interesting. If I remember correctly these were like servant quarters back in the day.

This was a hospital. Right in the center where it looks like there is a small tin roof is like the ER entrance. People would bring their sick or hurt on a boat and pull in there to drop them off. I don't remember exactly, but I don't think that is operating as a hospital anymore.

This was so funny. The dog just acted like he owned the joint. I couldn't not take the picture.

That will do it for this blog post. I know I didn't include the Turkey part of the trip but I don't have some of the pictures I need, so those will be included in a future post.

I must say that while there are many difficulties to traveling (being away from my beautiful wife being the most difficult) some of the advantages are being able to see some places and experience different cultures and foods that I would not be able to otherwise is a blessing. And that same travel has allowed Courtney and me to take some trips that we otherwise wouldn't be able to (like Rome for Thanksgiving and Hawaii this October for our anniversary).