On 17 May our tour, by double decker coach, to Poland started in Nijmegen by picking up the first participants. Via several stops in the Netherlands and Germany the coach slowly filled up overnight. Because of quite a serious traffic jam around Hannover we lost some time and we were therefore a late when arriving at our hotel in Poznan on Friday (18 May). We went there to pick up the last group of the (71) participants that had arrived there by plane on 17 May. Because of the very heavy traffic in Poznań we stopped at the required parking lot with 8 hours and 59 minutes on the driver’s tachograph. That left the driver with just 1 minute spare…
On arrival at the parking lot, where the registration for the spotters day for the 2018 NATO Tiger Meet would take place, it became apparent that it would be a problematic process. When you invite hundreds and hundreds of people to come at the same time, you need to make sure that your process is organised. It wasn’t. When we ended up on base, it became apparent that the location for all those invited was indeed the one that all feared it would be. We would be facing the sun throughout the entire day. Too bad! Despite this everybody tried to make the best of it. The morning launch of the Tiger Meet participants was quite large, with the majority of the specially painted aircraft taking off. At the end of the afternoon it was time to leave Poznań-Krzesiny and to head for the parking lot again to meet our own coach and driver. From the parking lot we went to our hotel for the check-in for the next four nights. The evening was spent in the city of Poznań where food and drinks could be found without any problems.
