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.