Retroactive Blogging -- Traveling Fool (or maybe just regular fool)

Hey Blog readers! I know that I haven't posted anything in a while, but I have been pretty busy with vacations, finishing jobs, moving to other continents, finding a place to live....well, you get the picture!


But I did want to capture my last few trips here and share them with you too. So here are some retroactive blogs that I hope you will enjoy about my last few trips around Eastern Europe.

Traveling Fool (or maybe just regular fool)

Now that it's almost time to go back to Texas (BOO!), I have been thinking about how much I have been able to travel while I'm here.  The short answer is A LOT.

But to quantify it (since I'm a scientist, I like data), I decided to count up the number of trips vs the number of weeks I was in the office. I will be in Europe just shy of 33 weeks (almost long enough to incubate a human!).  And the number of weeks in which I was in the office for FIVE full tortuous working days...wait for it...FOUR.  4 weeks in which I sat in my chair in Belgrade and worked at my little desk in my soul-sucking quiet little office.  Not to mention that one of those weeks was volcanically imposed!  That means that for 28 out of 32 weeks, I spent at least one day during the week travelling.  That travel could have been to our factory in Maglic, in our office in Istanbul, visiting vendors in Spain, or maybe on holiday in Greece.  So for approximately 88% of the weeks, I was travelling somewhere.

My country count for the past 7 1/2 months makes me happy:

1. USA
2. Serbia
3. Turkey (5 times)
4. Hungary (2 times)
5. UK
6. Thailand
7. Croatia (2 times)
8. Slovenia
9. Spain (2 times)
10. Germany
11. Greece
12. Holland
13. Belgium
14. Romania
15. Czech Republic
16. Montenegro
17. Bosnia and Herzegovina

* Plus the Vienna airport 2 times and the Rome airport once.  However, for a country to count, I must do one of these three things:  1) spend the night in a hotel 2) have a meal NOT in an airport/train station/bus station or 3) do something significant such as go to a museum or spend a long day sightseeing

This list is great, but it also scares me because what am I going to do when I go back to Texas?  Granted, I have had positions in Frito in which I traveled a lot.  But travelling to our factories in Alabama, Kansas, and Indiana are a lot less adventuresome than a road trip in Romania or a factory tour in Turkey.

Therefore, if any of you want a weekend house guest, please let me know.  I'm only limited by time and money:).  Maybe I can try to visit 17 states in the next 7 1/2 months; anyone willing to help me make that challenge?