Journey's End

The final day in Warsaw was bittersweet. We had such a great, vibrant experience and knowing that it may be a long time before I am back again, I didn't want it to end. We had a great day at Apreo doing a group work session and brainstorm with our team before we wrapped up. There were many hugs exchanged with our Polish counterparts and some LinkedIn requests sent out. :) I will never forget my time here! It was incredible. Thanks to all for the warm hospitality and wonderful memories.

Saying goodbye to Ewelina

And one last shot with Hans and Antoine, our hilarious and talented Belgian agency buddies, before parting ways.



Wrapping up the week the way it started - at Hard Rock Cafe! ha ha... And a little last minute shopping at the mall down the street. 

Goodbye lovely hotel room - only 4 hours to sleep in you before I wake up at 3:45am for the return flight home. Wearing my new black jacket that I bought at the mall - bringing home a taste of Poland! 

My 3:45am alarm of course did not go off, but luckily my Delta app on my phone sent me a reminder at 4:15 am so I was able to throw myself together and get down to the taxi in time. Whew! Here's a glimpse of the Warsaw airport at 5am.

A little light breakfast :) I couldn't leave without one last cup of drinking chocolate!














Later in the Amsterdam airport, we stopped off for some immunity boosting juice smoothies in a very cool cafe.

And a shot of Brad Pitt, whose posters were EVERYWHERE we went, apparently promoting a new movie he is in and also as the face of Chanel cologne. Unbelievable.

Thankfully we had a very uneventful 9 hour flight back to the states. i got plenty of movie watching time and just a little bit of sleep. Thanks to Chris Hemsworth, I didn't mind the flight at all. :)

When I got home, my welcoming committee of little men had created a lovely wall mural downstairs out of sidewalk chalk just for me. How sweet.















And they enjoyed their new Polish puzzles! Dziękuję mommy!

It's great to be home! :)

Keeping it Fresh

After a long night of social events, one would think I would have truly enjoyed the opportunity to sleep in and relax. Unfortunately, I have not been able to sleep more than 5-6 hours a night since I've come here. I promptly woke up at 6 am - wide awake - and decided instead of watching tv I would go check out the gym. It is located on the 43rd floor of the building and has a spectacular view of the city. After a nice 1 hour workout, I was refreshed and ready for the day. Check out these views!

Another full day of meetings and inventorying ensued, making me mind numbingly tired. Antoine and I spent the day working at Apreo while the others went to visit the local CHR Warsaw branch and had a pizza party. Not sure how I got that end of the deal. ;) I did, however, have a nice change of pace when I went to the basement to visit IT for a bit. Why is it that IT always gets the basement? Anyway, these guys sooooo remind me of US IT folks. Even with cultural differences, there are still so similarities.... like the need to build towers of pop cans as an art form. Univerisal IT decorating schema. Made me laugh :)

Lunch today was takeout chinese which was not picture worthy, but I did want to share my photos of dinner. Thai /Asian fusion - super light and such a great change of pace from the heavy meat and potatoes culture of Poland. Check out these beautiful dishes!

Fresh salmon over green, red and yellow peppers

 Oysters - not my thing, but pretty!

Oysters are definitely Sophie's thing. She ate nearly 2 plates of them by herself! Apparently it's a very French thing to do.

 Gorgeous sushi plate!

 Mango and shrimp salad with mint

 After dinner digestive shots. No thanks! I'll pass. Also, they served lemon sorbet in between first course and main meal to cleanse the palette. Yummmmmy.



Our little team has been having a great time in Poland and it's hard to imagine this week is already coming to an end. Long days and long nights, but so great to have a crash course in cultural immersion. There's no better way to really understand the culture than to become a part of it. Hope I can come back again and see more places, like Wloclaw and Krakow. Happy Thursday night!

Work Hard, Play Hard

I've decided that the theme for my trip to Poland is "Work Hard, Play Hard". The people who work here definitely have that concept nailed. :)

Here are a few pics of our lovely lunch (in between many more hours of meetings):

We couldn't use the the conference room at the branch for meetings, so we ended up using the hotel lounge/bar for our meetings which was a great change of pace. It's been wonderful spending hour after hour interviewing the people at Apreo to learn what they do, but concentrating that hard on understanding English with a thick Polish accent and interpreting what is being said is very tiring when you do to it for a long period of time. Hence, the need for the long lunch and "play hard" portion. :)

Antoine working very studiously on his Mac (side note: Mac laptops and iPhones are everywhere in Europe, just like the US).

And Sophie working very hard on her refreshment :)

This evening was the celebration of 30 days since the acquisition. About 40 people were invited to have dinner and drinks together from Apreo, our C.H. Robinson branches in Poland, and several other people from corporate headquarters in US and Europe. It was a fun group and I made a point of introducing myself to everyone in the room (of course). They were incredibly fun and made me feel right at home the whole time, as if we'd been friends for years. I spent the entire night laughing, saying Polish words they taught me, and looking at people's pictures of their kids on their cell phones. I also learned some Russian, some Italian and a little Finnish. People like to show off when they know that many languages and they were happy to teach me a few things. :)
The rest of this blog is filled with pictures of all the people I met. sadly, I didn't get photos of all of them and I can't remember half of their names, but we had a wonderful time regardless.

President of Apreo - Arek - giving a very nice speech about how great it is to be working with C.H. Robinson. :)

 Patrick (our European IT director) - on the left. I shared a taxi with him on the way to the restaurant. He is 6'6" and 3 of us were jammed in the backseat. We had a good laugh about that. :) Marta - who went to school in Texas and said "Hi y'all" when she met me. She's a Polish native with a southern drawl. Too funny. Three other CHR Warsaw branch guys and Marcin.

 Mike Neill (IT director) hanging out with my new IT buddy, Meciej (pronounced Ma-check).

Christopher, Agata (HR manager) and Ewelina (our Marketing counterpart at Apreo)

Don't remember this girl's name, but she laughed the whole time at Tom sullivan and his jokes. Not sure why he's holding a duck. Very strange.

Markusz and Robert - both very outgoing and funny. They were sales people, of course :)

Arek, Wym and Matt

Tom and Markusz

Joe (CHR branch manager in poland) - master of ceremonies for the night. He was taking all the pictures so I had to document him too. Hoping he will share his pics with me!

Tom (CHR CIO) and Izabella - Finance at Apreo

Hans!

Chad and Mark, clearly enjoying themselves

me and Marciej - Apreo IT director. Univerisal truth of IT: they always sit in the corner - ha ha.

Wiktor - Apreo Carrier manager and Marek - regional manager at Apreo

More CHR Polish branch guys. no idea what their names are, but they were hilarious!

Piotr - regional manager at Apreo, another guy I don't know and Sophie getting very huggy.

Finishing up the night at the corner milk bar again. Apparently after that some people went dancing at the club until 4 am but I missed out on that. Maybe next time. ;) Look how fun these people are - what a great bunch.

Food heaven and a little retail therapy

Today was a bit more subdued than yesterday. It started off relatively the same. I found my little nook in the lobby of the hotel to do blogging.

Then I went to breakfast. I know you probably think I'm obsessing a little over breakfast, but I am telling you this is the breakfast oasis of my dreams. I had to take pictures to share. This first one is the left side of the breakfast buffet (notice the chef - he's cooking up fresh pancakes, omelettes and crepes). There are numerous cereals, oatmeals, fruit, yogurt and toppings. At the end are the hash browns, bread puddings (yes, there are multiple kinds), eggs and other warm dishes.

 Here is the right side of the buffet, where you have more traditional pastries, assorted fresh fish and meats and salads, roasted tomatoes, potatoes and other pickled vegetables. Plus all those heated containers at the far end that I have not even explored yet!!

 Had Norwegian salmon for breakfast today!

 The dining room with my colleagues enjoying being up early after last night. :)

 The harp player - see I did not make this up!

 And freshly squeezed carrot juice. However you "squeeze" carrots, I have no idea but it was tasty!

Another long day in the office but I'm starting to get a feel for how this company works and the people here are fantastic. I will have to take more pictures of them. Here is a snapshot of the office and of the owner's car (a Mustang Shelby 500) which i got to ride in yesterday when he took us to lunch. He is a racer so he drove with the pedal to the metal the whole way around town, like most other Polish people I've met. I don't even want to know how fast we were going.

Also, we were joined by our colleagues from InstiCom - a European PR agency that we work with. Hans and Antoine are fantastic and joined us for the rest of the day and evening activities. It's so great when you can meet people you've been working with for 2 years but never met face to face! They are from Belgium, so of course they are very stylish.

Went to the central mall called Arkadia for lunch. Had a traditional Polish buffet meal that I didn't get pics of, but was of course amazing. Tried the apple pie pastry for dessert which is my new favorite!

After work, we went exploring in the other local mall by our hotel. It was huge and four stories high and very beautiful. Lots of great European fashion stores to look around and admire. I started to notice a trend in the Polish styles that I was seeing (beyond just the tight jeans). They are for the most part very European dressers and it was very difficult to find any stores that would be considered "Polish fashion".

You see a lot of half shaved heads, dyed hair (blue is the favorite I'm seeing), 80's grunge fashion combined with warm cozy knit scarves, sweaters and other fun layers. And really tall boots! Hard to describe, but more what I would have expected to see in London. i think Poland is very in tune with their European counterparts. Pull and Bear is a great store that I think embodies the extent of fashion I was seeing.

Apparently it's a running joke that Polish young people have a new hair style every few weeks. Hence the crazy assymentrical works of art that I was seeing. Gotta keep it fresh!

After shopping, we took a stroll over to a nearby restaurant called Na ZielNej - a classy Polish restaurant where there were all kinds of crazy things on the menu: venison, wild boar, guinea fowl, and bison to name a few.

Very cool ambiance - exposed brick walls with velvet curtains and funky lights. We had the place to ourselves the whole time. Probably because we were eating dinner at 9:30 again. :)

 Here's a sampling of what we tried (sorry for the poor quality photos!):

Pumpkin cream soup with lime foam

 Guinea fowl over a layering of thinly sliced potatoes and gravy (kind of layered like lasanga), and assorted roasted veggies. Soooooo good.

 Shared several desserts: This one is a pistachio cream with raspberry sauce.

 Some undescribable version of apple pie in a bowl with brown sugar and cream and a side of raspberry white cream sauce that you were supposed to suck out with a straw and pass around. Ummm.... But it was incredibly tasty!

 Blueberry Dizziness - blueberry ice cream with chocolate cake and caramel and blackberries

 Chocolate cheesecake with cranberries and mocha ice cream

Ok, so clearly I'm eating well here. :) Was going to hit the gym but decided to get some sleep instead. Tomorrow is going to be another long day and night.