Back from Stockholm

Everyone:

This week I had my trip to Sweden. As is usual for trips like this, it was mostly business without much time for sightseeing. I did get out of the hotel once or twice and take a few pictures. The first one that I have included here is the view from just outside my hotel. Downtown Stockholm is built on an archipelago, so our hotel was on a small peninsula jutting out from the mainland. What you see in the picture is the old town, situated on a small island across from the peninsula. The palace is just to the right of the buildings in the picture.

When he made our hotel reservations, our salesman had a hard time finding any hotels with rooms available, so he ended up getting us a more expensive hotel than we would normally stay in. We ended up in the Grand Hotel, an older hotel patronized by the Swedish royalty etc. When we asked why everything was so full, the answer was obvious: December 10 is the day the Nobel Prizes are awarded. It turns out that our hotel was the one the prize winners and their entourages were staying in. We saw lots of college professor type people wandering around, but had no idea which ones were the actual prize winners.

On Wednesday evening we walked to a nearby restaurant that served traditional Swedish food. For an appetizer I sampled something similar to an egg roll that had a paste made with raw salmon wrapped around shredded cabbage and dipped in horseradish sauce. My main dish was also Salmon, roasted at a very low heat for 4 or 5 hours. The food was all quite good.

The second picture is a statue of a horse that was in the middle of a street just behind my hotel. There were several streets in the downtown area that were set aside for pedestrians, with many small touristy shops along the sides.

Our meetings were held at the Scania headquarters about a 20 minute train ride from the hotel. They went very well and we seem to be establishing a good relationship with this company. We were all impressed with the way the company was run and with their manufacturing setup. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures of the production line. Of course, we came away from the meetings with a lot of urgent work to do, so I am going to be under a lot of pressure to get everything done before leaving for our Texas trip in two weeks.

We were disappointed along with the rest to hear how the hearings for Harvey went. We are continuing to pray for thier family.

-- Newel