My Favorite Thing
People have been asking me, understandably, about my "favorite" aspect of this trip. The short answer is... the trip. The longer answer has a few sections. I'll try to lay it all out below: 1) Surprise. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked Poland. I expected to love Copenhagen - and I did. I knew I'd be glad to again be in the cacophony of Turkey, and I was. I had no idea I'd love Poland. It's an amazingly vibrant country, beautiful and writhing (can I use that word in this context?) with opportunity. I want to figure out how to do business there. The Chinese already have. It's an exciting place. 2) Food. The whole darn trip was full of amazing eats. From the hotel breakfasts (the one in our Ankara, Turkey hotel was particularly incredible; I've included a few photos below, and you can't even see the olive bar) to wine-soaked Parisian lunches, we ate like kings and queens. That's not hard to like. 3) Access. I've met some amazing people in my life, but this trip was a seemingly never-ending parade of amazing people. From one meeting to the next, we continuously met with people in whose company it felt an honor to be. Quite the experience. 4) Tour guides. I've always sworn off guided tours as a waste, preferring to find the deep back roads less traveled. I still like that method of travel... but good tour guides can really shape an experience. Three examples that stand out: at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, we were guided by a woman with decades of art history expertise. She curated a massive museum into an incredibly informative, 1.5hour tour. It was spectacular. Similarly, in Warsaw, we were given a tour of the Old City by a guy who seemed to know everything about Warsaw, and I learned more than I'd learned in quite a bit of reading on the town. Finally, the Auschwitz tour was incredibly provocative (see previous post on Krakow to read more about that one). 5) Time. It was an awesome experience (in the true sense of the word) to simply have time to think about the world and one's place in it. I will long be grateful for that opportunity. Finally - moving back to a nutshell: it was a very fun, incredibly educational experience.
