Europe Part 2

The last couple of days were spent conducting meetings in Italy and Austria. I was in Venice on Wednesday and Ancona on Thursday. Unfortunately it seems that on these trips that my experiences are limited to hotel rooms, conference rooms and restaurants! Venice is always nice but this time I was not even on the peninsula but out and around the city. We drove from Venice to Ancona on Wednesday evening. I had not been in Ancona before and it was very nice. It is a beautiful, hilly area with lot's wineries, bike paths etc. It is on the coast so the seafood is also fantastic - very fresh. I am currently sitting in the airport lounge in Frankfurt and some lady from Norway is talking my ear off so it is hard to concentrate... so if I am rambling then you know why. I was in Austria (Vienna) yesterday for some meetings and it was of course, also nice. I took some nice pictures with my phone but my it somehow froze and I had to reset it so I lost all of the pics so I dumped some from the internet. Anyway, I am going to log off so I can go somewhere and get away from this woman - she is driving me nuts.

Euro Sprint!...

Well... I guess it is time for a Jim update. One of the reasons I started this was to keep my wife and kids more up to speed on what I am doing and seeing each day as I travel. Right now it is 5:30am in Venice. However, as with much of my travel this could be any city in the world! The last two days were quite busy - I arrived Monday morning in Munich, took a shower at the airport hotel and immediately hit the road seeing customers in Southern Germany. We were fortunate as the weather turned from rain to sunshine and it was a beautiful day. It is also somehow still interesting although frustrating to roll through the areas we used to live and not being able to really stop and enjoy it. I had one of my meetings Monday afternoon very close to the Chiemsee and memories of our trip with Steve and Elsie came flooding back. I remember sitting with Steve waiting to go through the tour of King Ludwig's castle (Schloss Herrenchiemsee) in the island and he had this horrible medeival torture device looking back brace that he had to wear under his shirt. He was particularly miserable that day but we had a very nice time nonetheless. After three meetings on Monday it was back to the hotel on the autobahn... I love driving at 200KPH!

At any rate the meetings are going fine. I have had some struggles as I picked up a cold right before I left so have been taking vitamin C like candy, drinking lots of water and sucking on Ricola lozenges and I seem to be holding my own. I lost my voice but it is coming back and I have been able to manage all of the meetings OK. I had kind of a funny experience yesterday. We were meeting the team for Bosch refridgeration close to Ulm Germany. The meeting was at their WW HQ facility which is also their primary factory. Our meeting was in one of the buildings on the campus and in typical German style it is all about efficiency. When we got into the building our host decided to take the lift (elevator). However, instead of the typical elevator with a door and a button there were simply two openings in the wall with open elevator cars going up and down contuinuously. You simply stepped in (quickly) as the box went past and then stepped back off on the desired floor - kind of like a giant assembly line. Each elevator car only holds one or two people so it was quite unique. Below is a picture of one of our distributor's sales guys just after he got into the lift. Well, it is time for me to get ready for the day and try to get some short workout in prior to running around Italy.

Why we don't drink alcohol!

JK!... this is Alyssa wearing the remants of a pinata' as a hat this summer at one of the kids' birthday parties. She is a beautiful, confident 14 year old and is a pleasure to be around... when she is not acting like a teenager. Alyssa, if you are reading this remember, I am watching you! I have a lot more embarassing photos than this one I can post...

Oops - there is one now!

Best buddies... sometimes.

Lily and Brock totally crack me up. Lily is now 4 and Brock will be 2 in a week. They spend most of their day together and have a traditional big sister, little brother relationship. Lily loves to cuddle Brock and dress him up, he likes to pull her hair and take her toys! Lily got a new jeep for her birthday and if we would let them they would spend all day, every day driving it around the yard. Lily packs it full of dolls and stuffed animals, Brock prefers rocks and sticks. She has become a very good driver and can navigate around most things at high speed - we don't let Brock behind the wheel! We did not expect these two additions to our family but are so glad they are here.