Pictures above from top: Rotary Ron and his daughter Natalie at Pininforina Auto Plant, me by the Uddevalla bridge and a picture of the slow clinging to everything. Above - the current Trollhattan locks and one of the old locks no longer in use.
Wednesday, March 11th – The big adventure for today was the Locks in Trollhattan. They connect Lake Vanern with the Baltic Sea and were first built in the early 1800’s. We started our adventure at a museum with a short film that told us about the history of the canals – it was amazing to me that ships as big as the ones that dock in Duluth go through this series of locks (there are four in row compared to Red Wing and other sites on the Mississippi that have one) and they are so much more narrow than ours… The first attempt at building locks at Trollhattan was started in 1661 by Christopher Polhem and some of the ruins are still visible along with the remaining structures from the locks built prior to the ones in use today (if I remember right, one dates back to like 1844). Oh, yeah, and the best part about today - - WE HAD MORE THAN 10 MINUTES OF SUN!!!!! It felt so good and just seemed to brighten everyone’s moods.
Just outside of Vanersborg, we had our first encounter with “Rotary Ron” – Ron Trimming is an Englishman living in Sweden and a former team leader in the early 1990’s of a team to Kansas. He was our driver and was using a mini-bus from a local dealership to haul us around for the next couple of days.
Our first stop in Uddevalla was the Uddevalla Kommun (kind of like our City Hall) where we met with Lars Hultberg who was the Director of Business Development. In Sweden, their Kommuns or Municipalities are more like our County Governments that are responsible for a group of towns. Uddevalla was established in 1498 and is about 80 km north of Goteborg and 200 km south of Oslo, Norway. It has 260 km of coastline within the Kommun and is an International Port. Prior to 1987, there were a lot of ship yards which are now being used for various businesses including Pininforina (they build C70 Volvo convertible coupes) which we will visit tomorrow.
After driving around town for a bit and stopping at Ron’s house for tea and light refreshments to review the program, we were off to dinner at Rotary Member Lars-Erik and Majsan Larsson’s house. It was a REALLY neat old house with an extremely narrow driveway to the back that I wasn’t quite sure our mini-bus would fit down but somehow, it did. The food for dinner was phenomenal… chicken breast wrapped in ham with potato cakes and some sort of gravy with kind of an Asian flair to it. Unfortunately, as we prepared to sit down for dinner, Alison was looking a little pea-ked and wasn’t even able to eat. Lars-Erik and Majsan were very fun people - - they currently own and operate a hotel and really wanted to have one of us stay with them but they were leaving in the morning for Istanbul so they decided to invite us for dinner. Lars-Erik likes to buy businesses and run them for awhile and then, when they are no longer challenging to him, he sells them. (Too funny!)
Shortly after dinner, our new host families came to “fetch us” and I met Jens (yenz) Petterson, my host for the next three nights. As we chatted on the way home, I learned that he and his wife, Jessica (pronounced yes-sica) worked together at Jens’ business (a security / communications company)and were married in August 2008. They have three children – Hanna (15 yrs) & Melina (13 yrs) along with four year old Tilda. She is so blasted cute and reminds me of my niece Talon, big time! Hanna wasn’t home the first night as she was on a ski trip with a friend until Thursday night which worked out good since I was staying in her room. We talked and hooked up my laptop to wi-fi and talked and looked at pictures and talked…. It was a very nice way to wind down the day.
PININFORINA AUTO FACTORY – Thursday, March 12
Our first stop was very interesting to me (I was able to “put on my manufacturing hat” for awhile today) BUT we weren’t able to take pictures so I don’t have a lot to share…bummer. The Assistant to the CEO provided the tour for us and she just so happened to be Ron’s daughter – her name is Natalie. Unfortunately, because of the state of the economy across the world, they have been forced to cut their production and lay off some of their workforce. This plant is a joint venture between Volvo and Pininforina and produces the Volvo C70 Convertible Coupe. Almost all of their vehicles are custom built to a customer order with 33% of their production being exported to the United States followed by 10% to Germany and only 3% sold in Sweden with the remaining % made up of many countries with less than 10% of their production. The plant is located right near the water and is EXTREMELY clean with a lot of space being utilized for manufacturing. At full capacity, they would need about 800 employees with some (but not a lot) of robots to run the plant. It was interesting to me to talk with Natalie a little bit about how unions work in Sweden as they seem to have more power but are also more willing to reasonably work with companies in the best interest of everyone.
After our tour, we had another opportunity to do our presentation for the Uddevalla Rotary and, with Alison ill & out for the day, it was up to me to make sure the computer & projector worked properly. By the end of the meeting, it had started to snow those big, wet, heavy snowflakes…
Then, we visited (you’re going to love this big, long name) Hjälpmedelsförvaltningen and met with an Occupational Therapist named Ewa. They are kind of an liaison between the municipality & the patient and they help people identify, get fitted for and learn how to use medical equipment. During our tour of the facility, Rachel, Jennifer and Kara took turns test driving a couple of the motorized wheelchairs & skooters.
Our final stop for the day was the Thorp Shopping Center for about two hours – I was hoping to find some more gifts to bring home but didn’t have as good of luck as I had hoped – it was somewhat comical to me that I was looking for “Sweden” t-shirts and only finding ones with New York, California and even Wyoming (yes, the bucking bronco from Wyoming on a t-shirt in Sweden)!! Sorry volleyball girls…. Still no stir sticks!
By the time we got back to our meeting place to be picked up by our host families, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground and the scenery was really breathtaking because it was that kind of snow that just clung to the tree branches and everything else making it really white everywhere. At home, tonight was taco night partnered with some red wine and later (about 8 PM), Jens went up the hill to pick up Hanna. Because Tilda was so excited to have me staying with them, I thought it would be fun to give them each one of the Lake Superior Agate necklaces that my mom had made for me - - they LOVED them! (It was even more precious to me as I was able to see them wear them during the next couple days and I hope they will be a fun reminder of my stay… ) After a pretty full day, I slept really well again. I have to admit that I've been VERY fortunate that I've been able to sleep everywhere we've been and am actually getting MORE sleep than I do at home!
Just outside of Vanersborg, we had our first encounter with “Rotary Ron” – Ron Trimming is an Englishman living in Sweden and a former team leader in the early 1990’s of a team to Kansas. He was our driver and was using a mini-bus from a local dealership to haul us around for the next couple of days.
Our first stop in Uddevalla was the Uddevalla Kommun (kind of like our City Hall) where we met with Lars Hultberg who was the Director of Business Development. In Sweden, their Kommuns or Municipalities are more like our County Governments that are responsible for a group of towns. Uddevalla was established in 1498 and is about 80 km north of Goteborg and 200 km south of Oslo, Norway. It has 260 km of coastline within the Kommun and is an International Port. Prior to 1987, there were a lot of ship yards which are now being used for various businesses including Pininforina (they build C70 Volvo convertible coupes) which we will visit tomorrow.
After driving around town for a bit and stopping at Ron’s house for tea and light refreshments to review the program, we were off to dinner at Rotary Member Lars-Erik and Majsan Larsson’s house. It was a REALLY neat old house with an extremely narrow driveway to the back that I wasn’t quite sure our mini-bus would fit down but somehow, it did. The food for dinner was phenomenal… chicken breast wrapped in ham with potato cakes and some sort of gravy with kind of an Asian flair to it. Unfortunately, as we prepared to sit down for dinner, Alison was looking a little pea-ked and wasn’t even able to eat. Lars-Erik and Majsan were very fun people - - they currently own and operate a hotel and really wanted to have one of us stay with them but they were leaving in the morning for Istanbul so they decided to invite us for dinner. Lars-Erik likes to buy businesses and run them for awhile and then, when they are no longer challenging to him, he sells them. (Too funny!)
Shortly after dinner, our new host families came to “fetch us” and I met Jens (yenz) Petterson, my host for the next three nights. As we chatted on the way home, I learned that he and his wife, Jessica (pronounced yes-sica) worked together at Jens’ business (a security / communications company)and were married in August 2008. They have three children – Hanna (15 yrs) & Melina (13 yrs) along with four year old Tilda. She is so blasted cute and reminds me of my niece Talon, big time! Hanna wasn’t home the first night as she was on a ski trip with a friend until Thursday night which worked out good since I was staying in her room. We talked and hooked up my laptop to wi-fi and talked and looked at pictures and talked…. It was a very nice way to wind down the day.
PININFORINA AUTO FACTORY – Thursday, March 12
Our first stop was very interesting to me (I was able to “put on my manufacturing hat” for awhile today) BUT we weren’t able to take pictures so I don’t have a lot to share…bummer. The Assistant to the CEO provided the tour for us and she just so happened to be Ron’s daughter – her name is Natalie. Unfortunately, because of the state of the economy across the world, they have been forced to cut their production and lay off some of their workforce. This plant is a joint venture between Volvo and Pininforina and produces the Volvo C70 Convertible Coupe. Almost all of their vehicles are custom built to a customer order with 33% of their production being exported to the United States followed by 10% to Germany and only 3% sold in Sweden with the remaining % made up of many countries with less than 10% of their production. The plant is located right near the water and is EXTREMELY clean with a lot of space being utilized for manufacturing. At full capacity, they would need about 800 employees with some (but not a lot) of robots to run the plant. It was interesting to me to talk with Natalie a little bit about how unions work in Sweden as they seem to have more power but are also more willing to reasonably work with companies in the best interest of everyone.
After our tour, we had another opportunity to do our presentation for the Uddevalla Rotary and, with Alison ill & out for the day, it was up to me to make sure the computer & projector worked properly. By the end of the meeting, it had started to snow those big, wet, heavy snowflakes…
Then, we visited (you’re going to love this big, long name) Hjälpmedelsförvaltningen and met with an Occupational Therapist named Ewa. They are kind of an liaison between the municipality & the patient and they help people identify, get fitted for and learn how to use medical equipment. During our tour of the facility, Rachel, Jennifer and Kara took turns test driving a couple of the motorized wheelchairs & skooters.
Our final stop for the day was the Thorp Shopping Center for about two hours – I was hoping to find some more gifts to bring home but didn’t have as good of luck as I had hoped – it was somewhat comical to me that I was looking for “Sweden” t-shirts and only finding ones with New York, California and even Wyoming (yes, the bucking bronco from Wyoming on a t-shirt in Sweden)!! Sorry volleyball girls…. Still no stir sticks!
By the time we got back to our meeting place to be picked up by our host families, there was quite a bit of snow on the ground and the scenery was really breathtaking because it was that kind of snow that just clung to the tree branches and everything else making it really white everywhere. At home, tonight was taco night partnered with some red wine and later (about 8 PM), Jens went up the hill to pick up Hanna. Because Tilda was so excited to have me staying with them, I thought it would be fun to give them each one of the Lake Superior Agate necklaces that my mom had made for me - - they LOVED them! (It was even more precious to me as I was able to see them wear them during the next couple days and I hope they will be a fun reminder of my stay… ) After a pretty full day, I slept really well again. I have to admit that I've been VERY fortunate that I've been able to sleep everywhere we've been and am actually getting MORE sleep than I do at home!
No comments:
Post a Comment