Dear Friends and Family:

It has been such a long time since we've written an email that you might have thought we've disappeared or forgotten you. Actually, we've been busy.

We returned to the U.S. in early March and spent three weeks re-packing, doing taxes and visiting friends and family. During this time we made a road trip to St. Louis for a family reunion to celebrate Jean's father's 75th birthday.

On March 31st we took to the skies and flew to Europe. We needed to be in Holland on April 8 to participate in a family reunion celebrating Bert's grandmother's 90th birthday. A surprise birthday party had been organized for her on Schiermonnikoog, an island off the north coast of the Netherlands.

Initially, we had planned to vacation in Europe for a couple of months, make our way back to the U.S. and work in Palmer, Antarctica, starting in the fall. Things have evolved and are still evolving as a result of a project that we started for Trend Technologies, Bert's employer prior to our previous trip to Antarctica. Trend wants to expand in Europe and we agreed to research how this could be done. Our European vacation became a European business trip. The rest of this message explains what we've been doing.

To go from place to place economically, we purchased 3-month Eurail passes. This gives us free 1st class travel on most trains in most European countries. This has allowed us to shuttle cost-effectively between our primary destinations-Hungary, Barcelona and Rotterdam and other places we've needed to be like Paris and London. The train shown in this picture is the Thalys, a 200+ mile/hour train that travels between Brussels and Paris. We have also taken the Eurostar that goes through the channel tunnel between London and Brussels.

Hungary has been our primary destination because customers of Trend in other locations (like Jabil shown in these pictures) are setting up factories. Hungary is the former Soviet-dominated country that is emerging as a large center for computer and electronics manufacturing. Trend would like to supply them. We have been visiting factory sites like this one and existing companies to try to determine whether Trend should establish our own factory, buy one or work with another firm that is already there.

When we have had time, we have also been able to see some of the sights. This is a picture of Budapest.

Here is a photo we took on Easter Sunday in a small Hungarian village.

Here is a picture of a small town called Nitra in neighboring Slovakia. Sony has a large TV manufacturing plant less than one hour from this village.

Here are a couple of photos taken in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. There's quite a contrast between the buildings constructed during the time this area was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and the communist era. One of these photos was taken looking one direction, the other shows the concrete apartments and highways built on the other side of the Danube after the second world war.

Many of the electronics companies and suppliers that are moving into Hungary are also operating in the Barcelona area of Spain. For that reason, we also made a one-week visit to Barcelona earlier this month. While we were there, we were able to visit Montserrat, a monastery located on a tall rock outcropping to the north of the city. We also briefly visited the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral started by Gaudi more than 100 years ago that is still not finished.

We have also had the opportunity to visit Ireland, where Trend already has a plant. While we were there, we visited downtown Dublin and took these photos.

We have had to be flexible in our travels. The last time we finished our work in Hungary, we had planned to drive to Vienna, spend the day there and take a night train back to Holland that evening. When we arrived at the Vienna train station to make our reservation for the night train, we discovered that there were no spaces left. Our only way to get to Holland was to take the train to Cologne (2/3 of the way to Holland) that left in ten minutes. So, we haven't seen Vienna yet, but we did get to see downtown Cologne in the rain, including this church.

We are writing this message from the Statensingel in Rotterdam. This picture shows the third-floor office that we use.

This is the view looking the other direction onto the singel (canal).

We have not had much time to tour in Holland. We did need to go to Russian embassy in the Hague two times, however to get visas. The International Court of Justice, site of the Bosnian War Crimes Tribunal is around the corner from there, giving us a chance to snap this picture.

All told, in the last month and a half, we have been traveling back and forth and through nine countries (Austria, Belgium, Britain, France, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Slovakia, and Spain). This has required us to have bills and coins in nine currencies and to speak six languages, which is quite a challenge, but it has also been quite a bit of fun.

During the next week and a half, we expect to visit Trend in Dublin, see a company in Belgium, finish a proposal for what we might do in Spain, then go to Budapest. If things go well, we will be able to get to Penza, Russia in time for our friend Vladimir's 50th birthday on May 27th. That will be another story.

We appreciate the messages we've received from many of you telling us about what you've been doing. We'll keep you posted about our travels.

Best regards, Jean and Bert

[BACK TO HOME PAGE]

This page was last updated on \\12/31/01.