I’m sitting in our Baltimore office on the fourth floor of a beautiful historic building. The blinds are up, and I’m watching flurries float down in the grey of winter.

A lovely scene that I’m sure I’d appreciate much more if I wasn’t so darn cold…

I arrived at work this morning to a near-empty building, a single coworker hanging around to tell folks that the heat is broken, and that most of our publishing crew has headed down to the local coffee shop, Donna’s, to get warm.

I’ve spent my morning shivering over a quickly cooling cup of coffee as a pounded out my article for Taipan Insider for tomorrow.

I figured I’d wait it out. They said they were fixing the heat, but that was about two and a half hours ago, and now my fingers feel like they’ve been making snowballs for, well, for about two and a half hours.

This must be what it feels like in Eastern Europe right about now. Gas from Russia is still not flowing right, after 19 days. There’s a deal on the table that all parties are expected to sign, if their cold hands can grip a pen.

Right now, it’s 37 degrees in Prague, with a chance of snow tonight. It’s 30 here in Baltimore, and as I’ve said, we’ve already got the flurries…

Stay warm, folks.

Two countries, three trains, two trams, and two buses later and I’ve arrived at my final destination on this tour: Budapest.

From the tiny town of Tatranska Lomnica, I made my way to Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. It’s not the best place for photos, though there are several palaces that are camera worthy, and the main square, which is surrounded by embassies, is a nice place to start your shopping.

Bratislava is fairly cosmopolitan, though. There are plenty of international businesses, like Ernst and Young (Private). It’s also home to the stock exchange, the BSSE.

And, like Krakow, there’s a lot of construction going on. As I told you last time, growth has not been checked so you’ve got unusual buildings thrown up side by side with historical sites. Take a look at the panoramic photo of the city.

Lots of concrete…

And cranes.

The city has quite a ways to go, though, but it’s getting a lot of influence from its surrounding countries. Bratislava is a mere three hours from Vienna, and is right on the border with the Czech Republic, too. It’s also 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Budapest, which is by far the largest city on my trip.

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They say when the U.S. sneezes, the whole world catches cold…

Well, it’s time for a trip to the drug store. More and more often, that means Central and Eastern Europe, or Emerging Europe.

For our Taipan VIP subscribers who attended our August Global Summit conference in San Francisco earlier this month, you may remember me mentioning a couple companies. Big names… Internationally recognized pharmaceutical companies like Teva Pharmaceuticals (TEVA:Nasdaq) and Sanofi-Aventis (SNY:NYSE). They’ve set up shop in places like Hungary and the Czech Republic.

Hungary is one of the most developed pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in Central and Eastern Europe. Hungary boasts the strongest biotech sector among the twelve new EU member states. That has enticed seventy core biotech companies to set up shop in Hungary up to now and 170 companies have some kinds of biotech related activities. The reason? Cost savings. Companies can save 30-50% compared to Western European enterprises.

But there’s another side to the drug industry and it’s increasingly finding a home in this very region.

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