The weather has been really nice. The Swedes tell me their weather is comparable to our weather in Nebraska. Right now, it’s in the 60s during the day and I would say the 40s at night. The sun comes up very early (too early for me to actually know when) and sets around 9 p.m. Our first couple days were beautiful clear blue skies. The past few days we have had a few short rain showers.
I since I love seafood, I can say the food has been wonderful. For the most part we have had a lot of fish dishes and potatoes. Yesterday at the Rotary Club meeting they had a wonderful salmon (I think it was raw) cut into thin slices and the main course consisted of fish (more salmon) shrimp and mussels. We continue to have lots of Fika (cake and coffee) – at least two times a day.
Yesterday we had a guided tour of downtown Västerås. It’s a beautiful city bordered by a large lake. We saw the castle that housed, the cathedral and old town. In the afternoon we toured Mälarenergi – the city owned power plant.
An important difference between this plant and the ones in the US is this plant generates hot water in addition to electricity (electricity is considered a byproduct of hot water generation). The power plant pipes this hot water all over the city and people tie their heating systems into it. The homes here do not have their own heating source. They did this in the 1960 as an effort to reduce pollution. Since the hot water pipes are under the street, it also melts the snow in the winter.
Today we met with a representative from the county government at the Castle. The county takes care of coordinating large scale activities and reports needs and progress directly to the government in Stockholm. Then we went to the Stadshus, city hall, and met with their city attorney, someone in charge of tourism and education. The city government is responsible for all the needs of the city – including education.
It has been a great experience so far. It is interesting to learn how others address the human service issues.
Last night we met Suzie Nordberg who was a member of the Swedish team that came to Nebraska last month. It was nice to see a familiar face and spend some time laughing about our and her travels.
Suzie and her boyfriend were also extremely helpful this blog. When I logged in the first time to update the blog, all the instructions were in Swedish. Google (who owns BlogSpot) must be reading the IP address I’m connecting from and tying to anticipate my needs by chaning it to the local language. Now, you can change it English, but the problem was I couldn’t find the button to do it since EVERYTHING was in Swedish. Thankfully, Suzie was able to help me! TACK SUZIE!
I don't have any new pics to post -- since my camera is ad astra. Here are a few that Cassie gave me from her CD. I'll try to get more tommorrow from rest of the team.
This is a photo of several lamps that were displayed in one of the houses we visited.
Cassie in the Nora chruch. The guide says it 'wasn't very old -- only about 150 years'. Guess it is a matter of perspective.
The paper mill we went to in Frovifors had a very large collection of beer cans from all over the world. Pete was in hog heaven over this and is taking a photo of a Harley Davidson can.
Kristi and Cassie at the iron ore mine.
3 comments:
Thank you for the blog. It is great to be able to keep up with your activities and to share this info with family and friends throughout the U.S.
Hope you continue to have a wonderful time.
Hey! I thought the figure 600 billion kronor sounded extremely inflated as a budget for Västerås, with a population of only 130,000 or so. I looked up last year's budget and I can buy 600 million Swedish kronor, but definitely not billion. If they have a billion dollars in their budget, I wonder what they're doing with the money. LOL!
Just thought you'd like to update your figures.
It was nice to meet you yesterday!
Regards, Marleen from Fryx
Eric Here-- thanks for the correction... guess I added too many zero's to my total.
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