July 6, 2007

 Beko is a Turkish factory that produces household appliances.

The photograph on the left – Austrian Brick Factory.

The photograph in the middle – Russian factory that produces blimps or zeppelins.

The photo on the right – Zhukovsky’s Memorial Mansion (he’s the father of Russian aviation).

The topic of the day:  Economy – Foreign Investments in Russia.  I would have a LONG day of traveling on a bus – 2 hours of bumpy Russian roads! 🙂  My butt was sore after the bus ride.

Our first stop: Beko – a Turkish factory that produces household appliances like dishwashers and washers (see picture above). Some interesting facts about the company:  The company has 20 Turkish employees – the rest of the employees are Russian.  The speak English to train the employees (they have English teachers that come into the factory to teach English to the Russian employees – we were told that English is a more practical language for training purposes than Turkish or Russian).  We also learned that absenteeism is high in this factory and that the company is trying to do something about it.

Our second factory:  a Russian blimp factory (see photo above).  They make zeppelins or blimps to monitor the natural gas and electrical lines out in Eastern Russia.  Very cool stuff to see how large these machines can fill a huge warehouse!

The  third factory were checked out was an Austrian brick factory called Wienerberger.  The factory has only been operational for about 6 months so they are not selling their products yet to the public (see photo above).

Our last stop of the day was to Zhukovsky’s Mansion.  He is considered to be the Russian father of Aviation.  A lady dressed in period costume greeted us with the traditional bread and salt greeting (See picture above).  This lady would continue to role play throughout our tour.  We entered the home (had to wear those infamous blue booties on our shoes – more on that in later posts) and she offered us a shot of cognac to welcome us into her home.  The tour concluded with some tea and chocolate.

The day was long and most of the American teachers were exhausted!  I went back to my flat where I had another delicious meal with my host family.  After dinner, we had wonderful conversations about America and Russia.  These conversations will always be a warm memory of my time in Vladimir! 🙂