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.