On Friday evening I left New Zealand and headed to Warsaw. This involved four flights – three with Air New Zealand to get to London Heathrow, and then one with British Airways to get to Warsaw. I left home in New Zealand at 5pm Friday, and got to my hotel in Warsaw at 6.30pm Saturday, so it was just over 36 hours in transit. Needless to say, I was pleased to get to my hotel room. My hotel has a great fitness facility, including an indoor 25 meter swimming pool, which I went to experience soon after unpacking. After so long in the air, it was great to be in water.

Sunday was set aside as one of two recovery days before my first workshop on this tour. Prior to leaving New Zealand I looked for English speaking churches in Warsaw, and found two. One was quite a distance from my hotel, but the other only a 3km walk. With Sunday being such a beautiful day, I took the walk slowly and got there in about 40 minutes, and just on starting time too. After the service finished I was going to walk back towards my hotel to get lunch, but my eye was caught by an imposing looking set of statutes. It proved to be the memorial to the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, and was a pretty solemn place to visit. So much bloodshed, and while the world is not at war at the moment (thankfully), there’s too much bloodshed still going on in many places around the world.

I continued down towards Old Town in Warsaw, and enjoyed seeing the castle, the festivities inside the castle walls, the horses ready to promenade, and families out-and-about enjoying each others company on a lovely Sunday afternoon. Lunch and coffee were procured, and then I walked back to my hotel, swam again, and stayed awake for as long as possible. With daytime hours here being almost the complete opposite to New Zealand, getting quickly into this time zone is mostly about not giving into the temptation to sleep during the day. And not freaking out when you can’t sleep at night either!

While the signs in Polish are largely undecipherable to me, I’m grateful for the wide ability to speak English among the people here. I marvel at the ability of people here and across Europe to move easily between different languages. It seems just amazing to me.

Monday was my second recovery day, and I originally planned to walk around Warsaw and take some more photos for my family back home. As it transpired, I stayed in my hotel for the whole day – to finalise preparations for my workshop in the Netherlands on Friday, to do some final checks before my workshop here tomorrow, and to start writing up my current survey on the use and adoption of IBM Connections.

Tomorrow is the first of the five engagements I have on this tour – the Doing Business with IBM Connections 5.0 workshop hosted by Epacta and Arrow ECS here in Warsaw. I’m looking forward to it.