Last few days in Molndal

Monday, March 30th - Two visits today. One to AstraZeneca - Alison's host, Stefan, told us about their pharmaceutical operations in Sweden and on the site in Molndal where they do mostly R & D work. Their facility in Molndal is HUGE and the architecture is amazing! This is just a portion of two builidings on the site.

Our second visit of the day was to IKEA. There we met with the Social and Environmental Coordinator to hear about their business practices PLUS we had a little extra time to do some shopping - even though we have an IKEA in Bloomington at home, it's still more fun to shop in Sweden!

Tuesday, March 31 - We had an early start this morning at the Molndal Stadhuset where we learned more about the structure of government in Sweden and how things work. In the entryway of the building, they had this awesome photographic layout of the town of Molndal.

At lunchtime, we gave our last official presentation in Sweden.

Tonight, we have a farewell party where all of our host families have been invited to join us one last time before we leave on Friday.

Thanks again to everyone that we have come in contact with during our time in Sweden - - it has been a trip of a lifetime and I, for one, will NEVER forget the things I have seen or the people I have met during my stay!!!!

Tack så mycket!! Steph

A great day in Mölndal

March 29, 2009
We had such an amazing day today (thank you, Tomte) so I wanted to post a few photos before heading to bed. The next few days are packed as we're nearing the end of this wonderful trip so we're trying to get some rest. Get well soon, Rachel, we missed you and hope you can join us tomorrow! - Alison
(By the way, I've updated my other blog with new information on sustainable eco-communities in Sweden if you're interested!)

Royal (Purple) Soup

Kara and I made vegetable soup tonight from a bounty of fresh ingredients. One thing that we had not considered is that the purple cabbage would turn the pureed soup into...a...slightly unappealing color! Despite the color of the finished product, the flavor was fantastic.

We showed the results to our host family and they laughed heartily. They suggested we post the pictures to our blog. Just to prove that the soup tastes good, here is a picture of me enjoying the fare.

-Rachel

Molndal - Valley of the Mills

Friday, March 27 – We wrapped up our visit to the Tanum area by doing a presentation for their Rotary club and enjoying some typically Swedish food called kåldolmar (which, if I understood correctly, is basically some minced meat wrapped in cabbage) – it was really good!!

After the meeting, we had a few minutes to do some shopping at a local store owned by one of our host families (Britt who hosted Alison) and we each found a few treasures to take home to our family and friends. I found a fun little serving tray that had a painting of the area that Britt herself had painted.

Our train ride back down to Göteborg started out uneventful but about 45 minutes into it, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. Luckily, one woman figured out we were American and told us what the captain had announced. Apparently, the train’s compressor had overheated and needed to cool down before we could proceed. We actually arrived in Göteborg pretty much on time and (as has become the norm) meeting our new host families, saying goodbye to each other and getting our luggage loaded happened so quickly before we were on our way to the next adventure.

My hosts in Mölndal are Sven and Anita Hilmersson along with their cat and they live in the countryside outside of Lindome. We enjoyed a quiet evening at home getting to know one another a little bit better.

Saturday, March 28 – this was a somewhat lazy morning as we really didn’t need to be anywhere until noon today. Sven took me on a little shopping excursion to a local village called Kungsbaka. We walked around and stopped into a few stores - - I got a chance to buy my son, Tyler some lingon berries to bring home to make pancakes with!

Our only event as a group today was lunch and a tour based out of the Mölndal Museum. We had a guided tour of the area and I later found out that Mölndal means the “Valley of the Mills.” During our tour, we enjoyed seeing the water falls or rapids that ran from the mill area and wound its way through many of the buildings that used hydro-power at one time for their production.

Back home, we enjoyed a quiet evening and I got a chance to Skype with Kevin and talk to him again for about a half an hour – Tyler was gone at band practice but I found out that he had quite an interesting week. There has been some serious flooding in the Fargo North Dakota / Moorhead Minnesota area this week. His band director pulled together a bus trip for the band kids to go to that area and help with the sandbagging - - I think this was AWESOME and I’m very proud of them all!! The floods in Fargo even made the news in Sweden - - I actually watched more TV tonight than I have in the past four weeks!

Sunday, March 29 – Today, we met everyone at a place called Gunnebo Slott – it is a manor that dates back to 1796 when it was completed. We were given a dramatic tour of the manor where characters from it original owners told us the story of the manor. It once belonged to the richest man in Sweden – it was said that he even borrowed money to the King! After the tour, we enjoyed lunch on the grounds - - I can only imagine how beautiful the gardens are later in the summer!

This evening, we were invited to Tottie’s house – she has been the GSE coordinator for our stay in Mölndal and was a team leader to India about a year ago. She lives on the sea and has a FANTASTIC view of the water!!! We also took a little walk and ended up climbing up some rocks to see even further out to sea!!! Of course, Alison and I typically have our heads down on, looking at the paths for cool rocks to bring home – if our luggage is overweight at the airport, we’ll have to blame the rocks!

Just a few more days to enjoy everything that Sweden has to offer us so I better get rested up for another jam-packed day tomorrow!

Steph

5 Days Left In Sweden

Today is Sunday. How strange it is to realize that our team has 5 days left in Sweden. Wow! The past 4 weeks passed quickly--and slowly--at the same time. I have made many new friends that I look forward to hosting (I hope!) or visiting in the future.

I decided to skip this day's cultural activities to recover from my cold. The team has met at the Gunnebo House (see below). With rest and lots of tea I should be ready for tomorrow's vocational visits.

On Monday, we will visit AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company, and visit IKEA to learn about the company's operations. I am really looking forward to the IKEA visit because that company has used The Natural Step framework. So, I've been reading my book The Natural Step for Businesses in preparation for the visit.

The Gunnebo House was a summer house of a wealthy merchant built in the 1780s. Kara offered to take a lot of pictures. I liked that suggestion and said that I would live vicariously through her visit. You can search on the internet for Gunnebo House or use the link I found: http://www.gunneboslott.se/index.php?id=1&L=1.

-Rachel

Needlework night in Strömstad

Rachel and I spent a lovely evening in Strömstad with our hostess, Madeleine, and several of her friends who meet regularly to work on their knitting and other needlework projects. We were both novices, but after some good instruction and a LOT of concentration, we managed to crochet a few square inches each!

We also paused during the evening for coffee and smörgås, which is a wonderful Swedish institution. Smörgås is basically an open-faced sandwich that you construct from your preferred combinations of bread, butter, cheese, jam, cucumbers, bell pepper strips, tomatoes, thinly sliced meat, etc. One of the specialties on this particular night was a sort of homemade preserve made from chantarelle mushrooms. Yum!

Our "Northern"-most visit to Tanum and Stromstad

Tuesday, March 24 – Kara and I started out the day shopping with Lotta in Goteborg. We stopped by a little handicraft shop just of The Avenue near the Art Museum – we each found a couple of items to bring home AND Lotta was kind enough to buy us each a Dala horse towel for our kitchens.

Jennifer and I are staying in a little fishing village called Grebbestad with Krister and Nina Jansson and their white cat named Champis (Sham-piece) right on the water.

Wednesday, March 25 – Two stops today on our program. The first was the Eko Park in Strömstad which was located in a relatively new facility built in 2000. Here they have developed programs to provide environmental training and conferences for everyone from 4 years old and up. The building was funded jointly through the EU, Sweden, the District and the Kommun but is now run with funding only from the Strömstad Kommun. The building was erected to be almost self-sufficient based on the technology available at the time. The displays along with Margareta’s stories are very entertaining and would certainly appeal to the younger audiences to help them learn about recycling and taking care of the environment.

The Loven Center for Marine Sciences was our second stop of the day and was located on the coast in Tjärnö. It is part of the University of Göteborg and in addition to being an educational center, they conduct quite a bit of research here and also have an aquarium to show their visitors. The various tanks in the aquarium allow the visitors to see the various fish and other animals that live at the different depths off the coast of Sweden. In the middle of the room, they have a shallow pool with animals that can be touched or even picked up by the visitors. I almost forgot - - for fika today, we got to help celebrate Waffle Day in Sweden with some waffles, fruit and cream.

Our evening plans included a boat ride out on the sea around Grebbestad with Krister & Nina’s friend Per. Their other friend, also Per, joined us and we left the harbor just after 6 PM so there wasn’t a lot of daylight left but just enough to sit on the front of the boat and soak it in for a few minutes before the sun set. As it was getting darker, we stopped by some rocks and caught a brief glimpse of two seals that were in the area. It was a delightful evening spent with some of our new Swedish friends!

Thursday, March 26 - We’ve been looking forward to today! Almost an entire day spent outside – the weather was once again sunny but a little chilly. First, we were shown some rock carvings at a location known as Litsleby. In our minds, we all thought rock carvings would be on a wall but these were actually on the ground! They’ve been painted with red paint to make them more visible for the more than 160,000 tourists EACH YEAR that visit the area! Some date back to 1600 BC. We enjoyed lunch and more information about the rock carvings at a local museum that specializes in documenting and research on rock carvings.

Next, was a walking tour of a small fishing village called Fjällbacka on the west coast of Sweden. This sleepy little town has about 1,000 residents in the winter months but comes alive in the summer with the visiting boats and people. Hans, our tour guide, told us the story of this town. It became part of Sweden from Denmark without much fanfare as Denmark thought it was a dying town but shortly after becoming part of Sweden, there was a “run of herring” that lasted 27 years and brought much wealth to the community…it was a quaint little town with a lot of character and a huge rock “mountain” that we got to climb to the top of and look over the city and towards the sea. Once we caught our breath from the climb up, the view was breath-taking!!! The descent was just as much fun as we wandered down a path through a part in the rocks.
Jennifer and I ended the day by having dinner with Krister and Per at the Nautic Restaurang. We all enjoyed a glass of Sweden-produced beer called Falcon and I tried a pizza known as Tjurpannan Pizzor. It was made of köttfärs (pronounced shurts-far and is ground beef with kind of a taco seasoning), bacon (no Swedish name for this ingredient), champinjoner (mushrooms) and I added some vitlök (garlic). It was really good but it’s been haunting me all evening! After dinner, while we waited for Nina’s movie to get done, we played Virtual Bowling…. It’s the same concept as Mark Lynch’s golf simulator where you actually throw a ball down a lane that ends about 15 feet from the line and then the ball continues down a tv screen and shows it hitting the pins. Our scores were horrible but we enjoyed it!

Friday, March 27 - We awoke to snow this morning! It is a beautiful sight on the Swedish coastline! After lunch and another Rotary presentation, it's back on the train to head "south" again and meet our next host families.

Steph