Today was the moment everyone was waiting for. The crown jewel of Sweden, the pinnacle of Swedishness. The Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory of Swedish furniture that the world over (excluding Africa and South America because there are no locations on either continent) knows, loves, and hates assembling. Yes, today was the magical visit to the IKEA facility that handles all shipping for the entire region of northern Europe…and it was alright.

The Visit

Quite a strong build up for such a quick letdown, right? Well those were my opinions as well and I know that my writing comes off more critical and cynical than most (its easier to critique than to create after all) but in reality, I am an optimist about most experiences, including the one that would take me to the source of 90% of my bedroom furniture, and the visit was a bit of a letdown. I was very much looking forward to my journey to IKEA because any worldwide company that deals with massive imports and exports through a 66,000 square foot space has to be a logistical phenomenon worth looking at right? Yes, it is, but the problem is that the amount of time allocated to the IKEA visit was not proportionate to the amount of time spent in the actual warehouse of IKEA. When our group of 40 entered at roughly 1:30PM (13:30), we were all taken through security, through the gate, passed the barbwire because IKEA doesn’t mess around, and taken upstairs into this rather small conference room with a projector. From there we all watched roughly 45 minutes of videos related to the history of IKEA and all the good it does to the community and the world. The problems I had with this approach were the fact that a large amount of us could not get a direct view to the subtitles on the screen, so the parts where they were speaking in Swedish (which they do often, as you can imagine) were lost to us. The other part I had a problem with was the fact that I could have watched these videos at home. I understand I probably wouldn’t research IKEA as extensively and I understand the sense of pride a large company has, but at the same time, I would rather be given numbers and statistics on your business than YOUR opinion of your business. As it turns out, the press looks favorably on your writing when you’re in control of the editors. I would hate to discredit IKEA because they really do seem like a well-meaning company and they did give us fika, but with all due respect, I did not want to watch videos from the lobby of your company while standing inside the actual company.

The Actual Tour

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so upset by the videos if the amount of time we had at the facility wasn’t stressfully limited. Once we put on our protective gear and went out to the floor I was stunned. The building was immaculate. There were clear lines and systems in place; there were no obvious messes or excess amounts of inventory just waiting about. The aisles were all semi-automated and efficient. For someone who has been working on floorplans for the last 18 months, this was amazing to me. This might seem like a no-brainer to have for a warehousing facility, and yes it really is, but to actually implement such a clean and well-organized warehouse was incredible. I have several mental notes saved for when I return to my own facility but that was my problem: The number of things I wanted to know were too constricted by the time and there was no possible way that I could understand a fraction of what I would have liked to given the schedule. I very much enjoyed the tour of the facility; I very much tolerated the other 2/3 of the tour. I was also asked how this relates to the current class that I am taking, and I will say that the warehouse itself doesn’t. I could argue that it is a product of logistical placement and make-or-buy philosophy to make it sound smart, but in all honesty I was enjoying comparing it to my facilities class (to which I saw some aspects employed) and my current job (to which, while good, can always be improved). I am hoping that the trip to Husqvarna proves more schedule friendly because after Sweden’s crown furniture jewel, it would be nice if this next tour blew me away*

*Context, Husqvarna creates gardening and lawn supplies, including leaf blowers. It was a long stretch to make the pun but I’m glad I went for it.*

Some might be surprised to hear that ever since I have gotten to Sweden, I have awoken to birds chirping nearly almost every day. While this seems like a fantasized version of a morning routine, I can assure you that I am not part of a Disney movie, and in fact, those birds sound like seagulls who are about to take their last breath on this miserable Earth and oh God, someone stop the pain! I would grow concerned about my feathered alarm clocks but considering that I hear this literally every. Freaking. Other. Morning. I think they’re being dramatic…Then again, it may be a new group of seagulls taking the place of the older ones, but oh well, I’ll become more interested in the seagull homicides once it starts happening after 4AM.

My Life So Far

As far as week two in Sweden goes, I am still in this strange limbo where I either study (which isn’t really a post-worthy event) or I attend a cultural package event, which I should specify is not a school-sanctioned event. I want to make this clarification now because I have another drinking story in this post, and I don’t want to put the University’s name next to the endorsement I am getting from AA.

My Studying So Far

When nothing really interesting is happening, I try to meet the requirements for the blog because there are a few things that I have been told to observe and post on here. One of which is to stalk sit and observe people in normal open scenery. e.g. bars, coffee shops, restaurants, and so on. What I can tell you based on my observations is that Swedish people act relatively the same as Americans in most cases, and if you ignore the language, you may not be able to tell the difference. Believe me when I say that I would love to tell you how the Swedish unhinge their jaws for meals or sacrifice a goat to Cathulu, but no, they are very normal. They too speak, laugh, socialize, eat, and get uncomfortable by the guy with binoculars clearly staring them down.

Class Assignments

My initial impression for class assignments was overly positive and now that I have endured a week, I think I can be more critical in my analysis of it. In all honesty, I thought this class would be a bit easier due to the fact that, even though this class is in English, most of those who are attending this class are not native English speakers and therefore the class would be taught at a slower pace than what I was used to. Unfortunately, that is a two-way street and the lecturing as well as some of the test questions are roughly translated which adds a bit of a learning curve to the assignments. I don’t particularly mind those who do not speak English fluently and it would be very close-minded of me to discriminate  what they share with me especially when I butcher the Swedish language every time I try it, but I do start to become irritated when it starts to affect my performance. For example, yesterday I had my first test. I was given three attempts to pass, and, out of the five questions, I was only allowed to miss one. I passed…the second time. The reason it took me two times to pass is because one of the questions asked which type of supplier was not on the supplier hierarchy, and I do not believe that a “potent” supplier is the same as a “potential” supplier. Regardless of bringing this up (along with several other students bringing up errors in a few other questions) the only thing we could do was take it again. To my credit, when I passed the second time it was with a perfect score of 4 out of 5.

I believe pacing is another challenge for this class. This class is a semester-long term moved into 25 days so it would obviously contain long hours. Something I love in Sweden is that after every hour or so, we are given 15 minutes to stretch our legs and digest the information we were presented. That being said, it is hard to keep one’s attention for a combined six hours, and I know this is essentially a day in public school, but the main problem I have is the lack of diversity in the subject. I believe it would be much more suitable to study five subjects in six hours than study one subject in the same time but unfortunately, we do not have that luxury. Pacing for the class in itself is an issue. Yesterday we finished the lecture an hour and a half early but to be honest I don’t think that was an accomplishment. My retention rate was very low by the time we finished due to the sheer tidal wave of information that had bombarded me for the last several hours. Despite what I say, I do commend the school on this class so far; the staff recognizes when we have all hit our limits and they try to work with us on staying attentive. To say that this class is difficult is fair, but it is not impossible or unreasonable. Luckily, we also have other events to help us unwind and it just so happens that the next event on that list was a pub crawl.

The Lesson We Never Learned

An interesting fact about me is that I recently signed up to volunteer at an elementary school. Being the youngest of four, I had always enjoyed the idea of helping someone younger than me and, though I would never choose it as a career, I also enjoy teaching to some degree. Couple that with the fact that I will be an uncle starting in October, I wanted to improve my skills in interacting with children. Let me just say, I got my first bit of practice last night when the alcohol turned a few of my group mates into very large children. I don’t want to throw them under the bus, and I would like to keep this as professional and dignified as possible, so for the remainder of this conversation, I will be speaking about it in terms of business and supply chain management.

My…company and several other partnering companies were planning on visiting three suppliers that night. The intention was to test their various products in order to heighten the state of our business ventures.  Though my intention was a controlled growth of my company, I cannot say the same for others because by the end of the first supplier visit, most companies (both foreign and local) had increased their ventures slightly more than they could handle but still not enough to collapse their infrastructure entirely. Though their resource management was not keeping pace with their expansion rate, they decided to venture on. It was during this venture that one of my partnering companies made a deal with me. If their company growth were to outpace their ability to manage it, they would agree to pay a penalty fee to my business of $10. Being the entrepreneur that I was, I quickly took them up on this deal and even paid $6 to increase the business growth in their company as a justification that $4 profit was better than $10 loss. My business ended up receiving said penalty fee, however what I forgot to account for was the resource management assistance I would then have to provide to said company due to their entire facility coming into chaos. That night was then spent trying to assist the company by getting rid of excess inventory, outsourcing transportation, checking overall systems management, and helping them shut their facility down at the end of the night. Overall, I would say that a net gain of $4 was not enough to compensate these costs but unfortunately, that is what needs to happen sometimes. Despite all of the fun, throughout the night nobody was ever in danger and, aside from a few hiccups, everyone had a good time. As a result, I am now $4 richer. Win-win economics.

Before I begin today’s story, I would like to preface it by saying that it may not be in the best of spirits. Last night I received an unexpected call about a death in the family and needless to say, it has caused a lot of strife for both me and my family. Aunt Stacey, I know you’re with God now and I dedicate this post to you. I love you and will miss you dearly.

Today marked another day in the life of Jonkoping, only this day was all about traveling. The plan was to go to the castle of Vadstena, the ruins of the castle Brahehus, and the town of Granna. At 8:45 we all reluctantly ventured on to the bus, still weary of the last time we entered one as a group but luckily, most of us were too tired to care and the ride was smooth enough. On our way there, I couldn’t help but notice the massive tracts of land that were along the route to Vadstena. The open fields and wildflowers, along with some of the wind turbines, made it quite a picturesque sight-seeing trip while I wasn’t drifting in and out of consciousness (give me a break, who gets up before 9AM on a Saturday).

Castle Vadstena: The Most Asymmetrical Symmetric Castle

I awoke to a very loud voice on the bus speaker telling us that we had arrived to Vadstena and my, was it a sight to behold. The outside of the castle was breath-taking. It had a moat that surrounded three sides of it and four cylindrical towers that I am told were used for the Castle’s defense due to it being able to shoot in all directions. Along the main entrance were three massive towers linked together by smaller sections of the castle. Overall the outside was very impressive but, as you might be able to tell from the title, something was…off. The main tower of this castle had a very intricately designed window whose design was roughly 20 degrees off-center. As in, if you rotated the design on the circular window, it would be perfect, and yet here you had this cockeyed design that very much bothered me. I could possibly let that go though, that is, until we started the guided tour of the castle. If I took a shot for every time this tour guide said the words “symmetric” and “harmony”, I could’ve put my Wednesday night stupidity to shame. Once while we were on the outside of the castle, I counted the windows from the center. 1. 2. 3…hey wait a minute, the left side has one more window than the right! I know this castle was built in the 15-17^th century but at least stop bragging about the symmetry if it looks like all your measuring came from Picasso! The interior of the castle had some impressive historical rooms and historical symmetry but overall, I think the consensus of the whole group was “lacking”. I don’t want to say that the castle was not impressive, but I expected more relics such as guns, clothing, silverware, and everyday articles, but you could clear most of the rooms in under 5 minutes and these rooms were roughly at least 1000 cubic feet each. I am glad I visited once but I think this was something where once was enough for me.

Ruins of Brahehus

Since we were on a tight schedule, we did not stay in Brahehus for very long but as it turns, out we didn’t need to in order to have a good time. Brahehus is the remnants of an old castle/fort that can also be viewed in 30 seconds; there is nothing to read, nothing else to see within the ruins, but the view that it has is simply amazing! For starters, it looks over Lake Vattern which in itself is absolutely beautiful. The West side overlooks the town of Granna and the East overlooks large amounts of fields. The sights are quite breath-taking and once we all had our quick photoshoot, we were ready to move on to Granna.

Candyland

Granna is a rather small city/town/something or other that has roughly one candy shop per block. From my understanding, Granna is famous for its handmade candies and taffies and if hard candy is your favorite, I am sure you would enjoy it. We were all given an hour to explore the city so we naturally all went to a shop literally called the “Turist Shop” and to their credit, the sign was fitting. I believe any candy/tourist store has a maximum capacity of 10 people, so when 50 international students showed up to purchase things for their loved ones back home, this poor lone cashier just about fainted. She was a real trooper though because she processed all of us with a smile, but unfortunately that took all of us most of our exploring time. After I had been serviced, I had roughly 10 minutes to spare before it was time to go to the scheduled group visit of a candy store, so I decided to go into a store that had the name “troll” in it just for fun. The store was roughly about 100 feet from the Turist shop so it’s not as if I was straying far from the group but wouldn’t you know it? This store was also a candy store (for the record, the Turist Shop was also a candy shop, they just sold souvenirs too). Having been thoroughly convinced that I was on some hidden TV show, I walked 2 blocks, yes 2 blocks, back to the scheduled candy store for the tour. We all then watched how the candy taffy was made but I had previously seen the exact same process twice already so instead I bought some candy and left a little early to find… yet another candy store. Having been thoroughly confused about the economic choices of Granna, I decided to call it a day and join my group to head back to the bus. For some reason, the bus was located roughly a half-mile from where we were originally dropped off. I wish I could’ve been mad about that, but in retrospect when you visit 4 candy stores, walking some of it off isn’t a bad idea. Overall it was quite an enjoyable trip and I’m going to avoid the pun about the trip being sweet, so maybe that shows growth in my character. Oh, how this experience has changed me.

I have to admit; I’m having a hard time making this blog entry more exciting than it actually is because in all honesty, today was as bland as I had planned it to be. Today was the first day that I decided to sit down with my group and work on our first project which was all about zero waste and company sustainability. Aside from the mountains of reading that we were provided to comb through, the assignment itself was not such a hard assignment more as it was time-consuming. I believe that the hardest part about the assignment was more of combining the views of six people from four different nations into one semi-understandable report as the directions themselves left a little to be desired. Regardless of the paper, we managed to put in some good effort to get it going and now all we have to do is fine-tune it, so I would consider it a successful day.

The rest of my day consisted of normal routines. I explored another forest path behind my apartment complex after my workout and for anyone wondering, bugs in Sweden are just as annoying as bugs in Florida only they can navigate hills better. I am starting to think that after my first week here, I am getting into a somewhat comfortable state. I can understand roughly 10% of the charades I am given, I can point to things really well, and I know the local grocery store almost as well as my local Publix but that last statement hurts me a little because it feels like betrayal. Anyway, this bland day is something that I kind of needed in terms of change of pace. The only interesting thing that happened all day today was when my friend accidentally dropped her wallet on the bus, and we had to track it down. This operation naturally fell on me since I still had my phone and, due to the fact that I was actually able to get us on the right bus and have her wallet returned, I’m thinking about adding “international travel logistics coordinator” to my resumé when I come back home.

The last two days have been quite a blur to me but that may have been due to the lack of sleep I have been getting. Not only is life in Sweden different from what I am used to in the US, but my life in general is very different as going out nearly every night has never been a strong character trait of mine. In the past few days I have done quite some amazing things and quite a few…well, questionable things but that will be explained later.

The Day of 6/5

This day started off like a normal day for me. I woke up at around 7:15 still tired and then went to JU for my one class that day. The class itself was on the linkage through the supply chain and out of the three hours of lecture I think I can say that half of it sank in. Not a bad retention rate but after that long of a time, my ability to sit still and listen had quickly exhausted itself and desperately needed a recharge. As we broke for lunch, I didn’t really find it though because we were then invited to meet at the municipality which was both an amazing opportunity and the final nail in the paying-attention coffin. All 80 or so of us shuffled into a room where the air was like blankets, and not the default see-through blankets most of us had to sleep on during the first night. We all then sat through facts about Jonkoping for the next hour and normally, I would not mind this, but the clear consensus of the room was naptime. The battle against sleep was so obvious that if the eyes weren’t already shut, they were about as glazed over as a standard donut. Luckily for us though we all received a second wind. Un-luckily for us, it was caused by the basic need for self-preservation.

The Bus Tour

After the municipality had tucked us in, we were all then sent on a bus tour which, for some, was just another chance to sleep, or so we thought. The tour started off rather nicely. We saw some of the amazing landscapes of Jonkoping, noted a few places we wanted to visit later, and learned a few things about the city along the way from our tour-guide: a retired schoolteacher born and raised in Jonkoping. That part was great. Here is the thing about a city in Europe that was founded in 1284: The streets were not built with buses in mind. Another thing to consider is that buses lose to gravity. Our first heart-attack happened roughly 10 minutes in when the bus was going up a hill and we had to turn. The clutch quickly slipped on the bus and we all simultaneously were jolted in our seats to the point where we thought someone had crashed into the bus. The next few incidents came at the hands of several right/clover leaf turns that clearly did not have bus clearance as a priority as we jumped a few curbs. The second to last incident was when we actually managed to get the bus stuck on a hill as it was trying to turn into a development. This incident was resolved sometime around 1 hour 15-minute mark in of our hour-long bus tour. The final strike came at the hands of a roundabout when we had all moved passed the incidents, we could see the drop off point, aaaaaand we nearly get side-swiped by an Audi which caused us to swerve and stop as the durability of our seatbelts came into question. I’m not much of an expert of public transportation but as it turns out a bus can be completely unloaded of passengers in about 20 seconds if the passengers get out 3 at a time. After the bus tour we all went our separate ways just thankful to be on solid ground that wasn’t a hill. My group decided to go shopping at a traditional H&M to celebrate (H&M is a Swedish company) and we all got ready for the night ahead of us.

The Night Ahead of Us

Something I forgot to mention is that we were all looking forward to that night for a few reasons. The first being that we did not have school due to Swedish National Day the following day, the second (and probably biggest) was that that night was the night that a certain club in Jonkoping was hosting a student event and it would be the last one of the semester. Now, being foreign representatives of different nations, it became clear that this would be the perfect opportunity to officially get together and try to drink the other nations under the table. The other thing everyone was warned about was that liquor in Sweden is kept under strict control of the government and as a result, the prices would be a bit higher than what we were used to back home. I did the math and it turns out that college + sanction to drink + high club prices = massive pregame in the entire apartment complex, and far be it from me to deny a hand-delivered gift such as this. My group met up and we decided to have a bit to drink and then go to the club but when it came time to go, we actually never went. It may have been through the massive group indecisiveness but the main reason we opted not to go is that the massive pre-game turned into the actual game for a lot of people, myself included, and I felt like I had reached a limit after I started to notice that it took me much longer to get anywhere due to my legs not wanting to cooperate. I would like to preface this next part by saying that this was the most I had ever drank in such a short time, it is not something I do nor plan to make a habit of, and looking back I can say that I will never do this again, but I set out to make this blog truthful and fun and boy does this next part seal the deal.

The Dumb Decision

A few hours into the night, my friends had all gotten up throughout the span of 10 minutes to either use the restroom or go refill their drinks. I had started to wonder when everyone was coming back when someone who I had met just that night convinced me that my friends had gone to the club (which was set to close in about an hour) and that we should take a bus to go meet them. Confident of the extent of my travel insurance along with the solid conviction that this situation made sense, I agreed to go with this guy to the bus stop, which was a good 5 minutes by walking, 10 minutes by walking zigzagged. When we finally got to the bus stop, I started to realize that even in my intoxicated state, maybe this guy’s story didn’t hold up as well as it did before the walk. I then received a text from one of the people in my group asking where I was, and I told about how I was going to meet them at the club. We then had a very eye-opening conversation about how dumb I was and in the span of 10 seconds I make up the brilliant excuse of “I have to go” and I zigzagged out of there as fast as I could. I do not think that the guy who accompanied me actually had bad intentions, but I am also good not having that “what if” answered. I tell this story to highlight a stupid experience but also to give a lesson to the children. Don’t follow strangers to buses at 1AM. The rest of the night went by without incident and by the end I left with my keys, wallet, phone and my friends as we all struggled with the 30 feet back to our apartments.

Happy Swedish National Day 6/6

I woke up today (an accomplishment in itself) at 9AM because I had to be at JU by 10 for a cultural day event held by the organizers of my trip. My morning consisted on not eating anything, draining a bottle of water, taking a shower while listing all of the reasons I was not having the best of times right now, and brushing my teeth before going out the door. I very much wanted to be on time for this event and to my credit, I did make it on time. In fact, I was one of roughly three who did because it turns out that the battle of the nations last night ended mostly in a tie, with those who were still standing unassisted claiming victory by default. Despite my insatiable hunger and tired nature, I pushed on and enjoyed a healthy breakfast of Fika (cake and coffee) about an hour later when the rest of the zombies shambled in. We all talked amongst ourselves for a short while before going to the town square and enjoying the national day festivities. Swedish National Day to me looks a bit like the 4^th of July because of the flags everywhere, the abundance of people, food, games, bounce houses, performances, and the overall sense of community as everyone enjoyed what was around them. Most of the international students ended up taking a picture together and as it turns out, someone from the local newspaper was walking by and wanted a photo of us all as well, so it turned out to be a lovely way to commemorate the day. As you may have guessed, most of the students there were not in the best of spirits despite being well acquainted with spirits not hours before. As a result we opted not to continue the festivities  and just go back to Raslatt Centrum (Where we were living) and either do laundry, take a nap, possibly vomit (not me but it happened), etc.

The Coldest Lake I have Ever Been In

The rest of the day was spent exploring the city from through online suggestions and some of the sights we saw yesterday during Mr. Toad’s wild Bus Ride. We visited a nearby Rose Garden that was as beautiful as one could hope for. I had always been fond of roses and the flowers there were a marvelous shade of many different colors. I plan to post the pictures as soon as I can. From there, we visited Vattern: Sweden’s second largest lake that borders Jonkoping. Of the five of us who were visiting, all of us dipped our feet in but only my friend Will and I (begrudgingly I might add) dove head-first into the lake. When I say this lake was cold, I mean the water physically started to hurt to be in and after two minutes, I could not take it anymore. I regained feeling in my body roughly 30 seconds after stepping out and I would not recommend doing it, but I would definitely dive in again. To finish the night, we all went to get kabab pizza. It is a traditional pizza with a flavor that had been described to us as “interesting” which I have learned is always a stellar review for food. Although it was not my favorite type of pizza, I actually did find it quite enjoyable though so in this case the description wasn’t a complete misnomer. With the past two days mainly dedicated to fun I can say that tomorrow will definitely mark a more productive day as I start the project with my group, but first thing is first, I am going to pass out for the night.