Last Day!

Today was a very hectic day.  We woke up and had to clean our room, pack, and get ready.  The taxi came at about 9:30, and we went off to the airport.  All of the checking in went well.  I got to sit next to Katie during the flight to Copenhagen! It was really fun, especially because we slept the whole way.  When we arrived in Copenhagen, we had about two hours until our next flight. I was able to finish my final paper before we boarded the plane.  My seat was next to Jake, but there were barely any people on the plane, so he moved and I got two seats to myself! It was nice because I could stretch out and be more comfortable to sleep. 

The ride was smooth, but long. I watched some Alvin and the Chipmunks, some Bourne Identity, some Juno, and Whinnie the Pooh.  And I still had enough time to take a three-hour nap and read a bunch of the Inheritance Eragon book. One of the cool things was that we had a sunset all the way to Chicago because we were following the sun. I've never seen a 9 hour sunset before.

I was super excited because my mom and my boyfriend, Brennan, were waiting for me at the airport.  I’m so relieved to be home.  I went to La Fogata for dinner with them tonight and I realized how much I missed home.  It’s good to be back.

Goodbye Sweden!

Ice!

The ocean

Michigan!

I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog! This trip was awesome and I’m glad I made so many new memories.

Curling

We woke up bright and early at 10 this morning to go to curling at 11.  I had fun at first, but it got old pretty fast.  This was because of my aching knees.  I fell SO many times! I was going to put a picture of the bruises on here, but they look gross so I’ll keep that one off. 

Cool slidy shoe things and our brushes

I was really bad at curling. The basic process is to slide with the rock and push it to the other side towards a giant bulls-eye thing.  As it slides, two sweepers sweep in front of it to increase friction so that it goes farther.  I kept falling when I pushed the rock. And I kept falling when I tried sweeping. And I kept falling when I tried walking... It was not a good experience. At least I can say that I’ve been curling before.

Claudia is excited for curling!

After curling, we went to get hot dogs for lunch, and then Claudia went to the Scandinavium stadium to buy more souvenirs, but they were closed so we went home to chill until dinner. I took an hour nap, which was awesome. 

Instruments at the restaurant

Swedish Hard Rock Café!

Dinner was at this really cool restaurant.  Their lamps were instruments and they served reindeer.  My meal (description found on my Food! page) didn’t taste very good, but everyone else seemed to enjoy theirs.  

After dinner, we went to get crepes, but the stand was closed!!! I think I’m gonna steal that guy and bring him home as my carry-on.  You don’t understand how good those crepes are… I almost cried when I realized I would never have another one of his crepes. Ever. Never. Tears are flooding my vision. I should probably go compose myself. Claudia, Katie, Austin, and I will probably watch a movie. That will cheer me up.  See you all soon!

On a side note… Ben ripped his pants.  

Another relaxing day

So much food!

Today was really relaxing.  Katie and I woke up at 11 and left for shopping at about 1215.  It was nice to have no agenda.  Claudia, Katie, and I shopped all afternoon.  It was super cool to see all of the shops in Sweden.  I spent $200!! I think I’m done shopping for gifts for other people.  I dislike that I go to another country and I spend all my money on other people, but they will hopefully all like their gifts…

And another one.

Dogs in a shop

When we got back from shopping, Bert, from ABB Robotics, came to our hostel to talk to us about businesses in general.  It was very interesting to talk to him and listen to his advice. 

We left for dinner after that. I went with Katie, Austin, Claudia, Mike, and Laura. We went to a cool French place with lots of sandwiches and pastries.  My dinner was really good.  That’s all for now, folks.  I leave in less than 36 hours! 

University of Gothenburg and Akzo Nobel!!

Today was a relatively late morning (later than yesterday!). We got up at 845 and left at 945 for the University of Gothenburg.  We got a talk by two Americans about Sweden.  It was not as boring as I thought it would be, so that was cool. 

The University of Gothenburg presentation

Our speakers were Douglas Washburn and Meghan Bross.  While they talked, I realized that throughout this trip, no one dressed up as formally as us (except Håkan Sandberg, the CEO of Autoadapt, but that was understandable).  The two presenters were wearing jeans with nice shirts. We had suit coats and deadly high heels.

Anyway, Douglas explained some characteristics of Swedes. They are reserved, have a good work and life balance, love nature, and take gender equality seriously.  The proof that Swedes have a generally good work and life balance is in their work schedule.  Companies are required to give everyone a 15-minute bread in the morning and afternoon for coffee and a snack, like kindergarten.  Also, parents are given 300 days of work vacation after a baby is born.  This is split between the parents.  I thought that was crazy.

Douglas also talked to us about studying in Sweden.  Bachelor degrees take 3 years and master degrees take 2 years.  Also, all schooling is tuition free, there are no intramural sports, and they do a lot of group work.  Douglas told us that they are given 5 opportunities to pass the final exam and that great grades aren’t very important. I found this weird, especially in a European country. I didn’t expect that to be the case. 

Meghan Bross told us some facts about Sweden. They are all very good at English. Even if you want to speak Swedish, they say that they want to practice their English with you. It is very interesting.  She also told us a couple things about the working life in Sweden.  You get a lot of independence and there is a lot of flexibility. She also used the saying “frihet under Ansvar” which means freedom under responsibility. That just means that you can do whatever you want, but you gotta finish what you need to do. And she also told us a couple of Swedish words:

Fika= coffee break

Lön= salary

Traktamente= compensation

Fast Anställning= permanent position in a job

Semester= vacation

Chef= manager

The view out of the Akzo Nobel office window

After the University, Katie, Claudia, and I went to Haga for lunch.  We went to a really cute restaurant. Claudia and I had sandwiches and Katie had soup (look at my ‘Food!’ page to see what I ate!). After this, it was time to go to Akzo Nobel.  Akzo Nobel is a surfacing chemical lab.  They focus a lot on surfactants.  These are chemicals that basically help oil and water mix.  For example, if you wash your hair, the water won’t get rid of the oils. Instead, you need to use shampoo, which is actually a surfactant.  I thought that was really cool.  Sara Marlind told us about this.  When she finished her presentation, we got a tour of the Akzo Nobel area.  We got to wear super attractive hard hats with little flaps to protect our eyes.  They made us look very good looking….

Katie and Claudia loved the bus...?

Our awesome bus

Anders Larsson was our tour guide.  He brought us around all of the buildings outside.  We had too many people so we couldn’t tour the factory, but we got to go into one of the asphalt labs and talk to Mark Smith about his work.  He is the Technical Development Manager of Asphalt Applications at Akzo Nobel.  He taught us how they make asphalt and the problems they face.  This lab was my favorite meeting of our trip so far.  I love chemistry (which is why I’m a chemistry major) so I was really interested in all of the processes that they explained.  It would be cool to have a job in Sweden at Akzo Nobel!!

The sunset on the way home from Akzo Nobel

When we got back, we had a short time before it was time to leave for dinner. I had traditional Swedish meatballs, which were amazing.  Then we went to a smaller café for dessert (Tiramisú).  The rest of the night was relaxing. All of us just hung out at the hostel.

On a side note, we were supposed to go to Nudie Jeans tomorrow, but the CEO has a sickness in the family so we can’t go!! I wanted to go, but now we get to sleep in so I’m still happy.  Now I’ll be able to shop tomorrow AND sleep in! That is going to be fun!

ASCOM and SAAB

Today, we woke up at 7:45. That was way to early for me... I was so tired that I had troubles getting ready. This caused me to clamp my ear in my hair straightener twice. That was gross.

Today’s trip was to ASCOM. They make phones for businesses that resemble walkie-talkies.  They are waterproof and super durable if you drop them.  Our speaker, Ann, told us that they invented texting. I thought that was super cool. The phones are really ugly, but super durable. I wish they made them for students. I’d rather have one of those than my fragile smart-phone.  Also, they have 24 international sales partners, which are all very widespread. 

These are ASCOM's phones

Their main goal is to have mainly media advertising. They want to use that instead of flyers or brochures because more people go on the Internet than read brochures.  Their previous media campaign, their ads were shown 21.3 million times.

After this, we went to McDonald’s for lunch. That’s truly the lunch of champions. I got a cheeseburger happy meal! It was fantastic.  We finished quickly because we had to go to SAAB Technologies.

Notice the "no walking here" sign...

I had to wear these over my heels..

Our speaker was Tobias Persson.  SAAB always changes their products to fit customers needs.  Each customer needs something different. All of the products are made to order. It takes an average of 6 months to make one vehicle. 

After SAAB, we went back to the hostel and hung out until dinner, which was an open dinner.  Katie and I tried to do laundry, which we picked up at 1AM… After starting it, Claudia, Katie, and I went out to eat at a good Italian place. We got super dressed up and got super good food.  Their pasta was awesome.

empty train! 

We were scared because we were lost...

After dinner, we really wanted crepes, so we took the tram there, but it was closed. Katie had a brilliant idea to stay on the tram until it turned around at the end.  We noticed that less and less people were on the tram, until it stopped at the last stop. No one else was on the tram… The driver looked at us like we were really dumb, probably because we are uneducated tourists.  She helped us out though, and we transferred to another tram after trying to ask that driver if he drove past Olivedasgatan.  He didn’t understand us because we had no idea how to pronounce it. That was embarrassing… Anyway, we finally got home and were able to warm up and relax.

I’m not excited for tomorrow. We are going to the University of Gothenburg to listen to Swedish students tell us about America… We will see how this goes.  

Sauna and Hiking

After a dinner of yummy Thai food, we wanted to just relax. Instead of going anywhere, Katie, Mike, Austin and I went to the sauna. It was 195 degrees!! It was miserable, but then felt so good when I got out. After our sauna endeavor, we went on a walk. We walked up a giant hill and found a cool sight to see the city. It was dark and I only had my ipod so the picture is dark, but it's still cool. Then we found a playground!!! It was the most amazing playground ever! They had trampolines, a giant whale, a bunch of slides, and other awesome stuff. Then we came back and just hung out. So relaxing!! More business meetings tomorrow... hopefully they'll be fun.

A view of the city!

Free day 2!!!

Today we slept in until 10:30 and didn't get out of bed until noon! It was awesome :) It was a free day!! We had no idea what we wanted to do until about 1:30.  Finally, we decided to go to the art museum. There was a cool cartoon exhibit, which turned out to be super awesome. I was excited that we were allowed to take pictures. I'm using my ipod because my camera is broken, so they aren't high quality, but they are still better than nothing.

There were tons of naked people in the exhibit. Not alive ones, just sculptures and drawings and paintings. They were... interesting. Other than that, the art was awesome. Especially the "Claudia Exhibit," shown in the slideshow above. 

After the museum, we looked for a souvenir shop to find tacky Sweden gifts for people at home.  It took us about 15 minutes+directions from 2 people to find it, but it was closed!! We are gonna go back there on Thursday when we have more free time.  

Poseidon in front of the museum 

Is an upside-down table really art?

Katie and Claudia on the tram

The cartoonist

Cute :)

After we got back from our adventure, we were supposed to do an Iron Chef competition dinner, but JJ and his group were late, so some people just left to get Thai food from the store down the street for dinner. I'm hoping that it will taste good.  I don't usually eat Thai, so this will be interesting. Also, we are hoping to go to the sauna later tonight. We will see about that.  That's all I did today. It was very relaxing and I hope I'm rested up enough to have a great week/rest-of-the-trip.