Day 63

I was woken up at about a quarter to five this morning by a call from the Volvo IT systems monitoring team.  The main web portal for ASSA ABLOY was not allowing users to log in.  This was quite a major issue, particularly because this week/weekend is one of the most important financial reporting time of the year and the application is access via this web portal.

After spending about half an hour checking things to determine where the issue lay I called in reinforcements – Jens.  I explained what I’d found and he took over.  I tried to get back to sleep and was woken up with updates at 6am and 7am and at 7.05am my alarm went off. 

Let’s just say it wasn’t the best night’s sleep ever.

I made it to Helsingborg to catch my bus at 9am.  The bus trip to Gothenburg took a little under three hours, not much more than the train.  I finally managed to catch Alicia online for the first time since I’ve been here!  It was great to chat with her, even if only through Facebook (she hasn’t quite figured out Skype yet).  Also had a good catch up with Jodie on Skype.  Weird to think that this time next week I’ll actually be home with her…

Emma met me at the bus stop, we picked up some Subway for lunch then went out for a ‘picnic’.  We caught a small ferry to Hönö, one of the many little islands off the coast of Gothenburg.  Had a wonderful walk through the ‘bush’ until we reached the rocky coastline.  Found a spot slightly sheltered from the wind and sat in the sun eating our sandwiches and drinking tea.  We hiked the long way back, over and around big rocks.  It was a lot of fun.

After some down time at Emma’s place we headed out to her mum’s place for an Easter dinner.  We picked up her brother Kelle, his wife Melanie and their 4 month old daughter Heidi on the way.  Åse and Lise met us there and brought along Åse’s beautiful 3 year old long haired retriever, Trasse.  The nine of us had a wonderful evening.

I tried a traditional Swedish holiday food – Sill.  It’s small pieces of raw fish, served in some kind of sauce or pickled.  We had some with mustard sauce, some with a white sauce and some that was picked.  To be honest it wasn’t too bad – the fish didn’t really have that much taste and had a texture similar to sushi.  Apart from some Swedish beer we were drinking a Lindemans Shiraz Cabernet from Australia.

Eventually made it back to Emma’s around 12.30am, inflated my mattress and went to bed.