Happy New Year to everybody! I wish you a lot of fun in the New Year, and a lot of success - both in professional and personal life.
On the picture - in Dubai we have Christmas trees growing among palms 
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This is another post about the trip of Tim, Nino and Erik from Sweden to China by bicycle.
All posts about the trip might be found on this link.
Translation from Swedish in free style. The original post is here. Pictures related to this post are stored on this link.
The map of the passed distance described in this post might be found here.
The original post is written from the country where people now prefer to drink beer and enjoy life instead of living with Kalashnikov in their hands on the land full of mines. Former Yugoslavia was broken up to several states, and the cyclists are now in one of them – Serbia.
Days 27-29. Budapest.
Walking around in Budapest, its famous street Váci utca and a lot of other places.
Day 30. Budapest – Tass. 50 km.
The guys started the trip again at around 11 am. It took some time before they found the right way, but finally they started to pedal with full speed. In the evening, looking for the sleeping place, they found the island of forest in the middle of a field, where they stayed overnight.
Day 31. Tass – Kalocsa. 50km.
They decided to wake up earlier to ride longer distance. But it was raining in the morning, so the guys started their ride about one hour later then planned. It would be the standard travel day among arable lands, farms and tractors, but just before Kalosca Tim got squeak sound in his bike, so the guys spent some time fixing the issue. Then, after another 100 meters riding they got the brilliant idea to end up the day ride and spend the classic Sunday afternoon in Kalosca. So they did starting from the dinner at the local restaurant Gyllene Gaffeln.
Day 32. Kalocsa – Sombor. 100 km.
The day was just excellent. The morning started from a good ride motivated by good weather. The breakfast went not far away from a petrol station. The guys just started boiling water to cook noodles using their Multi-fuel Kitchen, when they suddenly got a visitor. A man smoking a cigarette (!) came to them from the petrol station complaining that fire is prohibited close to the petrol station and they would move their kitchen to some other place.
After the breakfast the guys continued the ride pedalling through the endless farms and vineyards, and then through the city Baja coming closer and closer to the boarder with Serbia.
After passport control and new stamps in their passports, the cyclists went out of Europe Union. Together with EU, the asphalt on the road was over too.
In the first shop, the star status of the guys sky-rocketed The shop visitors tried communicate to the guys with simple words “Hello” and “How are you”, asked for autographs
The trio went further. After a while they felt they were very welcome in a city Sombor where they got the first dog attack. An old mongrel dog seemed to be sleeping, but she couldn’t let three testy-looking Pedigree portions just go away. The dog tried attacking the guys started from Erik who was riding first. She tried biting bags set on the back of Erik’s bike. Then the dog switched the attention to Nino who pedalled next. Nino tried to cheat the dog riding with tricky maneuvers. Finally, the dog got Tim. Tim started to panic a little searching his pockets to get his anti-dog spray, but he couldn’t find it. Anyway, the dog was left behind, although she followed guys for about another kilometre.
The night camp was set behind the city pool, where the guys had a kilo or two hamburgers with coffee for dinner.
Day 33. Sombor - Novi Sad. 100 km.
There was frost on the grass in the morning – very typical Swedish morning as guys were back at home. The ride started after the breakfast in one the countless coffee-shops in the city.
A cat ran across the road just before the guys. The cat got scared from the bikes and ran on another side of the road.
Unfortunately, there was a truck coming from opposite direction, so the cat came directly between truck’s tyres – and run out on another side of the road without even be hurt. Lucky cat!
The road led to Novi Sad where cyclists arrived at about 4pm. They stayed in a hostel in downtown. The guys met a man Miroslav, who told them the story of people life during the war under NATO bombing and inflation. The inflation was just terrible – you might order a beer for one billion dinar, and then, after the news on radio about the latest rates, you might order another beer already for 40 billion dinar.
Anyway, the journey goes on. The next target is Sofia where the guys plan to be in about a week.
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Or European, preferably British. Historically, it happened that territory of the modern United Arab Emirates was under British protectorate until 1968. Later, after UAE creation in 1971, UK still played very important role helping UAE to establish oil production, police force and so on.
US played similarly important role in Saudi Arabia. One of the largest results of this cooperation is Saudi Aramco company, which is acronym for Arabian American Oil Company.
Services and products from US and Europe are very well appreciated in UAE and Saudi Arabia. As my partner said once, “We, Arabs, do not trust east other.” Although he didn’t mean literally that nobody trusts each other in Arab world, his sentence is very important to understand that having American and European company will help you to run your business because you would gain more trust from your customers just because of your company origin. For some reasons, people in this part of the world tend to think that services and products come from US or EU are of better quality and you most likely get what you’re asking for.
Couple months ago our development partner from Egypt started sales in Saudi Arabia and we introduced them to our agent there. The agent rejected the offer simply based on the fact that this company was Egyptian and much more efforts would be needed to sell their products. At the same time the agent said that if the same products were distributed on behalf of US or European company, they would start distribution.
It’s clear that company origin will not help you to run your business if you don’t do anything else, but it will surely help you opening some doors easier.
Having non-US or Non-EU company doesn’t mean you cannot get customers – you can find a lot of companies in UAE from India, China, Russia, or other counties. It only means that you might spend more efforts to establish your sales. And finally, your product and its quality will talk, not where your company is from.
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