I’m fortunate. I’ve enjoyed lots of travel and had good experiences as I’ve done so. For much of the time it’s been business travel but a lots also been vacations when I’ve shared it with my family.
In this and subsequent posts I’ve tried to be consistent with what is a country. It’s an independent self-governing entity, generally speaking I guess it would be a member of the United Nations in its own right (although there is one exception to this viz Taiwan). This means that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t count, neither do the current ex Yugoslavia nations, several of which I visited before the breakup, nor the Turkish part of Cyprus. However it does include the so called micro states of which I’ve visited three.
The summary below covers my periods working with Dow Chemical in Switzerland. It includes the years that Clare and Charles were born (1981 and 1983 respectively). I held a number of management positions in distribution, purchasing and marketing. The photo above is of ‘my team’ when I was a marketing manager.
| 1979 |  | Norway: I was now based in Switzerland with a European responsibility so that meant lots of travel but it was still the days before Eastern Europe opened up |
| 1979 |  | Austria: this was a New Year’s trip and we went on the train through the snow of Switzerland and Austria. We experienced a very cold Vienna |
| 1980 |  | Saudi Arabia: I was involved in a major project which involved a group of us flying to Riyadh for meetings with the Saudis and the World Bank |
| 1980 |  | Bahrain: I was travelling on from Saudi Arabia to the Far East and needed to overnight in Bahrain to make my connection. |
| 1981 |  | Sweden: I continued by travel to Dow’s manufacturing plants in Europe with a trip to Norrkoping with an overnight in Stockholm on the way home. |
| 1981 |  | Denmark: I attended a conference run by US suppliers of Linear Programming software and enjoyed a couple of days in the vicinity of Hamlet’s castle |
| 1982 |  | Kenya: every so often our travel agent would come up with a cheap holiday options so we took Clare on her first proper holiday to the beach near Mombasa |
| 1983 |  | Czechoslovakia: I had moved to purchasing and travelled to Prague to meet a potential supplier. It was my first visit to a communist country. |
| 1983 |  | Finland: this was another ‘meet the supplier’ trip. I’ve always enjoyed visiting Finland but it’s not really big enough to merit a longer stay. |
| 1983 |  | Rumania: this was a mid winter trip and the Rumanians didn’t have enough energy. I remember a meeting in a government office where we wore overcoats and gloves |
| 1983 |  | Hungary: even in cold war days Budapest was not as drab as the other capitals. I remember a Hilton hotel with a fine view down onto the Danube. |
| 1985 |  | Portugal: I moved into marketing in 1984 with a distributor in every country. Some you only visited once but you had to build a relationship somehow. |
| 1985 |  | Egypt: we had a Middle East sales meeting and Egypt was on the way and had a sizable industrial base which meant it was an important market for our products |
| 1985 |  | UAE: this was a first visit, I’ve been back many times, but did I visit Dubai or Abu Dhabi? I recall flying out of the airport in the emirate in which we’d had our meetings. |
| 1986 |  | Tunisia: a bonus holiday in the autumn but there was a reason for those incredible offers. Great weather, nice people but dreadful food. |
| 1987 |  | Malta: this was another autumn holiday and the one during which Clare wore us down with continuing questions about the island’s history |
| 1987 |  | Yugoslavia: it was still just one country in those days but I visited the equivalent of four of the republics that have emerged from its break up |
| 1987 |  | Turkey: another Middle East sales meeting with sales people from Greece, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Iran. |
| 1987 |  | Poland: not long before the wall came down I visited another distributor with an impressive record of sales into pharmaceutical markets |
| 1988 |  | Lichtenstein: living in Switzerland it was difficult to avoid driving through Lichtenstein but I’ve also got a photo of us having lunch in a restaurant in Vaduz. |
| 1989 |  | Canada: Dow had a Canadian company just over the US border. Technically a visit but I didn’t see much of the country. I have been back. |
| 1992 |  | St Lucia: a first holiday after my hip op and after leaving Dow. We were there for Xmas and the New Year and sadly all subsequent Xmases have been cold ones. |
I spent 13 years with Dow Chemical in Switzerland and my business travel with them enabled me to visit most of the European countries. With these and some holiday travel I added a further 22 to my list.
As noted above I might cheat and record my visits to Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia as visits to two (the Czech Republic and Slovakia) and four (Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosova) respectively. And for that matter you might split up the UAE, I’ve visited Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
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