Sofia, Bulgaria

Well, a lot sure has happened in these past couple weeks. We finished up our training in Lommel, Belgium and received our country assignments. There are 7 of us in the training group, all of which are going to different countries. My country assignment was Bulgaria (located in the Balkan region right above Greece and Turkey). The other 6 people in our training group (all of which are girls) got sent to; the Caribbean (island hopping), Singapore, Finland, India, Panama, and Romania.

This past Tuesday, I flew from Eindhoven, Netherlands to Sofia, Bulgaria. I stayed there 3 full days starting on my project before I was called back for regional training here in Overpelt, Belgium. Tomorrow morning at 5:30am I will leave here and head back to Bulgaria for about 2 months.

In Sofia, Bulgaria I am staying at the Hotel Metropolitan with a business suite. It is by far the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in. They do all my laundry and dry cleaning for free everyday. Evidently they even iron your boxers too which is nice. They have complimentary beverages and all the other amenities you can imagine. I very much look forward to flying back tomorrow and spending the rest of the day there. Once I get back I'll upload some photos of my room and whatnot.

After two weeks of being in Sofia, I will move to a city on the Black Sea coast for roughly two weeks. During this stay I plan to go visit a few Purdue friends who live in Istanbul. It's about a 6 hour drive south to Istanbul so hopefully border control won't be too big of an issue.

As far as what people think of the Balkan region--yes, Bulgaria is a post-communist country that still has Russia's imprint, but it is developing quite rapidly. Sofia is a great city with tons of new construction and development. The city just needs road signs because it's impossible to navigate anywhere around there. We just recently got a GPS device for our car and we have to use exact GPS coordinates because there are few cross streets let alone addresses.

But I have met with the Greece/Bulgarian Dannone CEO and the German Metro's GM for Bulgaria which was quite cool. To see these big business men in action is actually quite inspiring. Although excelling through the ranks in a post-communist country may be a 'bit' different than the States, it's still cool nonetheless. For those of you who still don't know what I do, well that's no surprise. I work for a large media conglomerate based in Brussels, Belgium called Big Media Group. They own several different country investment analysis publications. I am currently working for The European Times as a country analyst/journalist. I basically meet with ministers, CEO's, and GM's to receive endorsement to publish a country report involving their sector.

It's a very challenging job but luckily the team I am on in Bulgaria has a PR girl that is a local. That makes our job incredibly easier in regards to translation and scheduling meetings. That being said, the company is now taking us out for supper in Eindhoven, Holland. Hope all is well on your end.

(P.S. There's a few new uploaded pictures. Sorry, not many.)

Cheers.