Day 46

Up at 7am this morning, said a quick goodbye to Serg then headed downstairs.  Happy to find my taxi waiting for me.  It was about a 25 minute ride to Brommer airport where I met Jens.  He’d had to get up at something like 4.30am this morning to get here before eight!  We found our hire car, scraped the ice off the windshield and we were off. 

The drive to Eskilstuna took about 2 hours or so.  We stopped to get breakfast at McDonalds along the way which was good, because I was hungry and tired.  I love that they have a separate hole in the wall for each type of rubbish…

Rubbish disposal, Sweden-style

We arrived at the ASSA head office (yes, the ASSA part of ‘ASSA ABLOY’) by around 10am.  Our visit involved a couple of meetings to do with the upcoming move of all the servers at one of their other sites to the big ‘data centre’ in Gothenburg.  Apart from this, the highlight of the visit was a guided tour of their factory. 

ASSA, like Lockwood in Australia, is the biggest and well known lock manufacturer in Sweden.  Unlike Lockwood, they still enjoy almost 100% market share in the country.  Apart from that our businesses are fairly similar, and the factories were too.  Saw lots of the same machines doing the same things.  Some things I thought were an improvement on our processes in Australia – I have a few things to talk to people about when I get back.

Left for the airport around 4.30pm to catch our plane at 7.25pm.  We stopped along the way to check out this big, multi-storey computer/tech store just outside of Stockholm and grab a bite to eat.  Prices are very similar to those we have in Australia – something I’ve noticed about most things in Sweden. 

After an hour long plane flight, a fifty minute bus ride, a twenty minute train trip and another five minute bus ride I’ve finally made it back to my apartment in Landskrona.  Met a guy called Sam while waiting for the last bus.  He’s from South Africa and has been in Sweden for a year now.  He said it took him about 7 months to learn the language but he’s still not an expert.  May catch up with him before I go home, he only lives about 500 meters away from my apartment.

Oh yeah, I SAW MY FIRST MOOSE TODAY!  Two actually, on the drive from Brommer to Eskilstuna.  Awesome.