Digital Home of Kristoffer Strom

Wednesday 08th of September 2010

My Travels

I like travelling. I like seeing new places, meeting new people, getting a fresh perspective on things. I even enjoy flying. Unfortunately I suck at saving money so I don't get to travel as often as I'd like. During my childhood we visited United Kingdom once or twice a year and the occasional cruise to Finland and back but never anything major.

But in 1998 the company I was working for was doing so great that we got a trip to Greece as a "good job!"-present and I got a trip to Kenya later that same year as part of my promotion. After that I didn't do much travelling at all besides the usual trips to UK (and a special one for my sister's 30th birthday).

But in 2003 something awesome happened. The state department contacted the company I was working for about hiring a consultant or two to do some work at the embassies. At first I didn't want to do it since I was... well, stupid. But after some convincing from my friends, family and my boss I signed up. And they must've liked my application because I was hired! After a weeks introduction to this project and teammembers, some education about the job we were suppose to do and alot of "do's and don'ts" of travelling around the world I was all set to go out into the world as one of 7 technicians in this project!

The usual routine was: Attend a meeting on friday about the upcoming trips and some info about where I was going, how many people worked at the embassy and so on. And I was also introduced to the people I was going with, usually two people from their support staff. Then we'd spend monday going to wherever it was we were going to, but if we were going outside Europe we'd usually leave on the sunday. Then I'd spend tuesday, wednesday and thursday preparing the new equipment and friday bringing it all to life. If everything was going according to plan, and we had a really strict timeplan, we'd get to do whatever we wanted all saturday and sunday. Most of the time this consisted of doing the usual tourist things but sometimes we'd get to do really weird and crazy stuff like joining the Hash House Harriers in Abuja! On monday and tuesday I'd be tearing all the old equipment down and wednesdays was spent cleaning up after myself. Thursday was spent going back to sweden and on friday I'd go in for a debriefing. During the first round I was just able to get back to sweden and go right out again but after the summer hiatus it calmed down a bit. But going from Guatemala on thursday, spend friday and saturday in sweden and going to singapore on sunday was quiet an experience - jet lag wise!

The places I got to visit was: Guatemala, Singapore, Budapest, Sofia, Buenos Aires, Gdansk, Brussels, Abuja, Kinshasa, Helsinki, Ankara, Copenhagen, Rome and Hague. Out of all those it's the three greatest ones were : Guatemala - the first time is always the best! Budapest - sitting by the Danube on a warm sunny day with a cold beer and one blonde on each side, that was life! Rome - just amazing place!

In between these trips I also went to Glasgow to celebrate my other sister's 30th birthday and in 2005 when it was my turn to turn 30 we went to Silverstone. In 2006 we went down to Prague for a "conference" with work and later me and my sis went over to Scotland to meet my other sister. In 2007 me and my buddy Mats got our buts down to Milan to meet some Warcraft buddies.

Hopefully I'll get to add more places to this list!

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