Stockholm and Linkoping Sweden
In June of 2011, Paul Lefebvre, Larry Rexford and I flew to Stockholm, Sweden for a quick trip to visit two customers. We left on a Tuesday and came back on Saturday and did not have too much time to do any sightseeing, but we did spend about 5 hours on trains and got to see a lot of nice, green countryside from a train. It’s good that it stays daylight until about 10:30 PM in June so we did get to do some walking around Stockholm and also around the city of Linkoping, about 120 miles southwest of Stockholm. I took some pictures and have posted a few here.
Click on any photo to see a larger view
There are a lot of healthy people in Sweden riding bikes all over and taking advantage of the short, sunny summer. Look out for those bike riders or they will run over you if you accidentally walk on the bike paths.
Also, if you get lost, they have a lot of signs to help you figure out where to go. We all got lost, good thing the signs were in English.
Everyone also speaks excellent English, sort of made me feel bad.
The only place we had trouble with English was when we were buying a train ticket in Stockholm to travel to Linkoping. Really long lines to buy a ticket from a human who probably spoke English so we used a kiosk that did not speak good English then we used a ticket that definitely had no English on it to board the train.
We got in the wrong train car and the wrong seats and got kicked out of our seats by a lady after the train ride started. We had to walk from the back to the front of a moving train, about 6 cars, to find where our tickets said we sat. We know how to read a train ticket in Swedish now! Then we found out later we did not even know how to pronounce the town we were going to correctly, no wonder they looked at us like we were nuts
These pictures are all at the harbor area in downtown Stockholm. We had several blocks to walk and it was very sunny and almost hot. There were hundreds of joggers and even more people on bikes.
This seems like the oldest part of Stockholm but I do not know that to be factual. It was just very old and nice to wander around. It certainly would be a nice place to visit on a vacation.
After the exciting and long train ride from Stockholm to Linkoping and a long walk from the train station to our hotel, we had 10 minutes to take a shower and get ready for a party with our hosts from Douglas Aviation and about 8 guys from the Royal Thai Air Force. We run into these RTAF people all over the world? We found our hotel at one end of a large square that had hundreds of people eating, drinking and having a good time in the sun. There were pubs, bars and restaurants all over. Again, I think the Swedish get out and party in the summer when the sun is out.
We attended a nice dinner party and then stayed out in the plaza in front of our hotel until just about 1 AM. The crowd did not die down, sun was up until 10:30 PM and it comes up about 3:30 AM (according to Paul and Larry, I never woke up that early!)
The party was a very good way to get to get to know a customer that we had never met, it made our business meeting the next morning start off well. We had boiled potatoes and eggs, several types of pickled herring -yum, reindeer stew, some good cakes,
wine and a good time.
We were in Stockholm and Linkoping for the last day of school and after seeing and hearing a lot of drunk girls riding around Stockholm in the back of some fast-moving trucks, we learned what high school students do on their last day of school, it is a good tradition.
These pictures are in Linkoping where there were at least a dozen tractors, trucks and many cars hauling around yelling high school seniors in trailers. For some reason they all wear white ship captains hats. Girls wear white dresses and guys wear suits. They all make a lot of noise. Proud parents take pictures and carry big signs showing photos of their kids as babies.
