Back in Seattle...

For the most part, we are all back in Seattle. There's a few folks that are still en route from a few extra days in Italy... and I don't relish the jet lag they will be experiencing tomorrow night during class. I returned on Sunday, and I'm still having to pump myself up with coffee in the afternoon to keep from curling up in to a ball to sleep!

A few notes from the trip:

- It wasn't really necessary to know English. In the places we went, the folks that we interfaced with at the businesses, restaurants, tourist sites, etc., knew enough English to get by. And most menus would have both the local language and English.

- It really twisted my brain to deal with three different languages (even for basic greetings, like good day, thank you, another beer please) and three different currencies. (Hungarian, Czech, and then I went to Paris after the official trip ended.) Doing conversions between forints, crowns, and euros back to dollars, all with different mathematical calculations... yikes. However, I do have to say it felt SO easy when I got to Paris and had half a chance at being able to read a sign and understand what it said. There wasn't a chance of that in Hungary and CZ!

- If I were to go back, I would try to structure the visits so that I didn't go from the least expensive country to the most. In Budapest, we could get a beer for around $1.50. Food and drink was a smidgen more expensive in Prague, and then even more expensive in Paris. Bit of a shock.

It was fun being a tourist in each of the countries, but by far, my favorite part was visiting the companies. I know some of my classmates had looked at the cost of the trip and decided they might just rather go on their own, perhaps with their family - but without being part of a school trip, you don't really get the inside look at companies like we did. We were able to talk with the Czech National Bank (their equivalent of the Fed) and the chief economist of an oil company. Absolutely incredible, and I'll always appreciate the opportunity... and eventually forget about the cost of the trip!

Here's a picture from the last night: