We had a great St. Patrick’s Day. After work a good friend of ours, Martin, showed us around town a bit. We started out by moving our parked car to another parking spot. Rhonda thought she got a great parking spot because she was able to park so close. After we walked out of the apartment, Martin told us that on certain days of the week they do street cleaning. Our street is cleaned every Tuesday morning from 2am to 7am.  You will get a ticket if you are in the way.

After moving the car we had an excellent dinner at a restaurant called the La Vacca. We had pizzas and Carlsberg beer. Very good overall. Along the way we learned if you “take away” (never use the words “to-go” in Sweden, it confuses the translation.) the food, it costs about 50% less for this place. However, the atomsphere was great and it was worth it to be there. Also, the place is about 10 meters outside our apartment door!

After dinner we went to a great bar. Martin has spent some time there. It’s called the Dubliner. The place was full and amazingly enough almost everyone was speaking English. I had a few pints of Guinness and Rhonda was drinking Carlsberg. We hung out for a few hours and talked with some of Martin’s friends who he plays football (soccer) with. In fact one of them may be going for a jump at the local DZ in June. We hope to be there when he goes.

Before leaving Rhonda worked hard to get a popular hat from the bartenders. After going through three of them she was able to get one. Here a picture of her wearing it at home.

Chad

On Tuesday, we went to the International Skating Union’s World Figure Skating Championships 2008 held in Göteborg, just down the street a few blocks. We bought our tickets about 6 hours before the competition started and ended up about 3 rows from the very top. Neither of us had ever been to a skating competition.

Tonight it was the Compulsory Dance and the Pairs Short Program. It took us a while to figure out what was good and bad. Some of the routines did not look as good as others, but scored very well. After a few routines we learned the technical score has a lot of weight and also how synchronous the pair performs holds a lot of score. By the end, we could estimate what the scores would be to within a few points before being posted. (Rhonda guesses better more often than me.)

One routine we saw was the Chineese pair Dan ZHANG / Hao ZHANG. They were excellent and won the evening’s competition. Here is the ISU’s web site and here are the results from the competition.

Here are a few pictures we took.

Chad

Greetings from a cold and snowy Gothenburg!

It’s Monday morning and we woke up surprised to see that it’s snowing outside! This was not the forecast. It was suppose to be partly cloudly today like yesterday. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day. I guess the weather is unpredictable here.

Anyway, I will tell you about our weekend, but one thing first. I recently found out that since our Volvo C30 is a flex fuel environmental car, most of the parking places in Gothenburg are FREE! I was very excited to hear about this news. This will make life much easier and we can now park much closer to the apartment.

On Saturday, we ventured out to see a little of Gothenburg. We used Gothenburg’s public transportation and headed off toward the mall which is called Nordstan. Chad needed some type of electrical device for his work phone. We then walked a few blocks to view the Kronhuset. The Kronhuset (Crown House) is the oldest building in Gothenburg. It was built in 1642-54 and was used to shelter ammunition and supplies. Today the Kronhuset is used as a concert hall. Below you will see pictures from our walk and the Kronhuset itself.

Our next stop was the Sjöfartsmusset (shipping museum). We were planning to see the statue called Sjömanstornet, but it was to be closed until summer, however they would open it for 2 hours on Sunday which was the next day! Until then, we could see the shipping museum for free during this special viewing weekend. It was usually 40 Swedish crowns (English plural version of Swedish Kronor) to tour the museum. Tomorrow, we would see the statue which was normally not open until summer. This worked out great for us!

After visiting the museum, we made our way back to the apartment. We found a small grocery store next to our apartment, so we decided to pick up some more diet coke. I think stopping at a grocery store each day for diet coke will be our normal routine. 🙂

Saturday evening, I took Chad over to Hisingen Island which is the fourth largest island in Sweden. This is also where the Volvo headquarters is located. On the island, there is a nice park called Keillers Park that offers great panoramic views of the city of Gothenburg. Below are a couple of pictures that Chad took, one of which is a picture of our Volvo C30!

On Sunday, our plans were to head back to the Sjömanstornet statue. It was open from 1PM – 3PM. The woman statue stands facing the water and it symbolizes all women saying goodbye to their husband who is leaving for sea. The top of the statue is 230 feet over the ocean and at 170 feet is a viewing tower/platform.  The platform is round, so we could see both a view of the entrance of the harhour and also of the city. It was a beautiful sunny day, and Chad got some great pictures. Check out a few of them below. The last one is a panoramic view, you will need to click on the thumbnail to view a larger size.

Well, that’s it for now!

Rhonda

After waking up in the middle of the night and trying to get back to sleep we awoke to a bit of rain outside. We’re told it rains here quit a bit during this part of the season.

The jet lag was still hitting us a bit, but it is getting better. In another day or two we should be all done with that.

We are located just 1 block away from Ullevi stadium. It’s the biggest stadium in Scandinavia and holds about 43,000 seated people. For us it means a good parking spot underneath.

I walked Rhonda to the car this morning and parking at the Ullevi stadium seems to be a fairly good spot at about $20 for a full day. Hopefully we can keep the cost down. Maybe we’ll find a better spot around here as we explore the area in the upcoming week.

The apartment and the internet connection that came with it are excellent. It will allow me to work from here without any problem. Here are a couple of pictures of how it looks.

Chad

It has now been exactly 24 hours since we took off from Greensboro for Gothenburg.

Chad and I both are very tired, and I think we will end our day soon since we have only had about 2-3 hours of sleep, but I wanted to post a short description of how our day went.

When we arrived in Gothenburg, Magnus (my team leader) picked us up at the airport. He cracked jokes about how much luggage we had…he said we could easily stay a full year with the amount of luggage we had.  We are located on the 3rd floor of an older apartment building. We piled up all of our luggage on top of each other in the tiniest elevator you have ever seen. The elevator was about 3 feet by 3 feet square.

After saying goodbye to Magnus, we headed off to the grocery store to stock up on some food. We spent about 2 hours shopping because we couldn’t find simple things like salt and cinnamon.

Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you, that we are driving a Volvo C30. It is brand spanken new. I love it. We will have to take a picture soon so you can check it out.

After we returned from the stressing trip from the grocery store, we tried to find a parking space for the car.  Let me tell you, it’s like living in NYC, there are no parking spaces available. I had to call my team lead again (Magnus) and ask for help. He told me to try an underground parking lot not too far away. Anyway, that worked out great after asking for some help from a pedestrian to help us understand how to read and work the parking fee machine.

Once back at home, we got everything unpacked, which took about 2 hours as well. The apartment is going to be very nice. It’s a big one bedroom and it even has a dish washer in the kitchen!

That’s it for tonight; we are going to now get some rest!

Rhonda

We spent almost all of Sunday packing, weighing, and checking our luggage. We are taking our jumping equipment so we ended up with 6 big bags along with 2 carry-ons each. We have a ton of luggage.

At the Greensboro airport, we are delayed at least 2 hours before leaving. The United Airlines are waiting for a flight attendant so they can fly to GSO.