I love Romania.  THe people are probably one of the most friendly in all of CEE.  So I took a trip to Romania with my husband to see the sites for a weekend, which turned out to be work.  What originally planned to be a weekend of sightseeing in Bucharest and then a sub visit on Monday turned out to be the Romania technical expert summit in a little village outside of Bucharest.  (A small town outside of Brasov called Sacele).  My husband was a good sport to land and ride 3.5 hours with one of my Romanian colleagues.  He arrived late at night at the little German like hotel and amused himself while I did session, we did head out for a short hike in the woods and saw many of the villagers hiking up to get fresh water from the mountain stream for the day.  While he was traveling to join me, I was scaling up a mountain side not dressed properly and having to borrow a sweatshirt and hiking boots from Loredana.  It was very beautiful.  I then had a presentation with the technical experts and some fruitful discussions on what Microsoft can do better to support technical communities.  We then got to partake in a Romanian festival and tried rotisserie Pig, Hungarian-Romanian Goulash, and the only vegetables Romanians eat is pickled- cucumbers, tomatoes, and cabbage.  We tried some Romanian partially fermented grape juice and regular wine.  Good times.   Afterwards we headed to Brasov, then to Dracula’s castle and then the long trip back to Bucharest (it should have taken 3 hours instead it took 6).  The next day, Greg and I joined Loredana for her 30 birthday celebration at a Mexican Restaurant.  It was very nice of Loredana’s husband to then drive us all over Burcharest after the dinner to ensure we saw all the sites! Greg then headed home and I went back to work at the Romanian subsidiary as we went through Q1 and Q2 plans and execution.  Some pictures below of the few days in Romania. 

A few fact about Romania for you.  Bucharest is hometo over 2.6M residents. Romanian legend has it that the city of Bucharest was founded on the banks of the Dambovita River by a shepherd named Bucur, whose name literarily means "joy." His flute playing reportedly dazzled the people and his hearty wine from nearby vineyards endeared him to the local traders, who gave his name to the place.  Bucharest is laden with historical charm – from the streets of the Old City Centre, which are slowly being restored, to the grand architecture of the Royal Palace and the lush green of Cismigiu Park. The city also claims a large number of museums, art galleries, exquisite Orthodox churches and unique architectural sites.  Nicolae Ceausescu’s legacy, including the Parliament Palace (formerly called the People’s Palace), which at 3.76 million square feet stands as the world’s second largest building after the U.S. Pentagon, provides an interesting introduction to the dictator’s megalomaniac vision.   I saw this and it has got to be larger than the Pentagon it goes 11 floors under ground and 11 floors up- it is amazing.  Very sad that people were starving and he had to create this palance for his ego than the betterment of the people of Bucharest.  Bucharest’s buzzing cultural scene – 37 museums, 22 theatres, concert halls, opera house, 18 art galleries, jazz clubs and hip nightclubs – will certainly keep you busy.  You must go visit- I highly recommend.  A few pictures of our trip:

So I have had the opportunity to visit my team in Serbia twice this year.  Our first visit was to discuss Q1 plans and how things are going in the server business in Serbia and how our outreach was going to IT Pros across the country.  I love this team where 2 guys are doing the work of 15.  During our brainstorming, we decided to launch our first ever Influencer Summit in Central Eastern Europe at the Sinergija Conference.  Sinergija is the Serbian’s team largest IT Pro and Developer conference that has been running for more than ten years.  This year we decided to do a pre-day with our top technical experts across Central Eastern Europe to bring them together, share their stories, get additional trainings and understand better their needs for the support they do for local communities.  We brought 85 experts from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Greece, Romania, Croatia, Slovenia, Malta, Bosnia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Serbia.  We also brought some MVP experts to speak, Microsoft Research and one of our Security experts from EMEA.  The poor team hit Murphy’s law like no other.  First, with an outbreak of swine flu that scared many from wanting to travel to Serbia.  Then the patriarch pasted away and the country was declared 3 days of mourning which put businesses on hold.  Then the track leaders of their Win7 sessions got the worse flu and had their demo machine stolen.  But the team still moved forward and drives an amazing conference!

As you can see from most of my trips, they are composed of the MS office, Conference Center, Hotel and some local restaurant.  So Jose, Gavin and I did a tourist trip on overdrive after breakfast.  We powered through the sites in 2 hours before we had to head and do our sessions.  So a little about Belgrade, Serbia...  Belgrade (Beograd) is the capital of Serbia, and has a population of around 1.6 million. It is situated in South-Eastern Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula, at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. It is one of the oldest cities in Europe and has since ancient times been an important focal point for traffic, an intersection of the roads of Eastern and Western Europe.  Belgrade is one of the oldest cities in Europe, with archeological finds tracing settlements as early as the 6th millennium BC.  Belgrade’s wider city area was the birthplace of the largest prehistoric culture of Europe.  I was quite surprised to read this.  Also, Serbia has been conquered by many groups.  In medieval times, it was in the possession of Byzantine, Frankish, Bulgarian, and Hungarian rulers. In 1521 Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the seat of the Pashaluk of Belgrade, as the principal city of Ottoman Europe and among the largest European cities. It frequently passed from Ottoman to Austrian rule and remained an Austrian outpost until the breakup of Austria-Hungary in 1918. The united city then became the capital of several incarnations of Yugoslavia, up to 2006, when Serbia became an independent state again.

Couple of cool sites to visit: Kalemegdan Park, St Mark’s, Old Palace, Student’s square, parliament, and the walking area is pretty nice.  A few pictures below: