This is my last blog. I have left Poland and am now back working in head office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The last few months have flown by in a swirl of packing, moving, and settling back into life and work in Wellington. I left Poland a few days after the

2011 has started off with a bang following the Christmas/New Year break.
On Sunday 9 January I attended the opening of an exhibition of photographs of New Zealand at the Asia Pacific Museum in Warsaw. They were the winning photographs of a competition run on line by a Polish language website devoted to New Zealand: naszanowazelandia.pl.

How time flies. The last few weeks have been no exception. First the Pike River mine tragedy consumed us all. Then I accompanied the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Estonia and made a quick trip to New Zealand to see family, before returning to a snowy and wintery Warsaw. The sharp contrast between a New Zealand

November is the month of remembrance in Poland. November 11th is Poland’s Independence Day. It is also Armistice Day, commemorating the end of World War I. On the second Sunday in November, the British commemorate Remembrance Day and hold various commemorations at the three sites of Commonwealth War Graves in Poland. The events surrounding these

Two international comparisons were released last week. New Zealand was in the top three on the World Bank’s “Doing Business 2011″ ranking of the ease of doing business around the globe. It was third on the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Index. This index is an alternative to conventional measures, such as per

New Zealand’s Special Agricultural Trade Envoy was in Poland last week to meet with Polish agricultural officials and farming organisations, and to visit a modern Polish farm. It was an opportunity to share our experience of the structural changes in agriculture that took place in the 1980s and to describe how this placed New Zealand

Last week I visited an international agricultural trade fair in Poznan to support a New Zealand business venture that was represented at the fair. In the past agricultural trade fairs in Central and Eastern Europe were the way that companies – foreign and domestic – established new contacts and made deals leading to distributorships and

Te Ara – Maori Pathways of Leadership is the name of an exhibition of stunning photographs that has just opened in Olsztyn, Poland. The opening was an incredible display of Maori culture in its unique form.
Around 20 Maori from New Zealand, led by kaumatua from Rotorua and Northland, as well as Professor Paul Tapsell of

Last week I attended a commemoration in Warsaw of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, organised by the British Embassy. I was very proud to see a placard at the event which publicised the unveiling of the memorial to Air Chief Marshall Sir Keith Park in London. It was terrific to see the

I have written before about the 734 Polish orphans who arrived in New Zealand in 1944 following their explusion from Poland. A historical film about the story of the Pahiatua children has now been released from New Zealand archives and been made available by New Zealand On Screen to watch online. See “The