Sweden Fun Facts

Ok, no big story here, just some tidbits of my time here in Sweden.

• This is officially the farthest north I've ever been. Here in Ornsköldsvik I'm at latitude 63.3 which is farther north than Yellowknife or Anchorage, and almost the same as Fairbanks. Hence, my first week here it never got dark. It's not quite the midnight sun, but sunset was at 11pm and sunrise was at 3am so even at 1am you could still play sports outside! But the climate here is the same as Edmonton, due to the gulf stream coming up here. It's been high 20's my two weeks here with occasional rain.
• This whole area around Ornsköldsvik is a UNISCO World Heritage Site because it has the highest land rise in the world. In short, this area was the thickest part of the ice during the last ice age 20,000yrs ago, about 3km thick. The weight of the ice pushed all of this land 500m below sea level. Since the ice melted it has been rebounding ever since to it's position now 286m above sea level. And it's still rising at a rate of 8mm per year. http://www.highcoast.net/english/eng.html
• All this makes the landscape here amazing. Every turn in the road there is another big deep beautiful lake. There everywhere, a boaters paradise.
• Gas here is expensive!!! It is now at 13Kr / litre. The current exchange rate is 6.5Kr to the CAD dollar. So that is 2CAD / litre!! Which is probably why there isn't a ton of waterskiing and related sports around here, boats eat too much gas.
• Oh sports how I miss thee. Luckily Maria had me meet a friend of hers son who is 19 and just as much into sports as me. So we played Badminton (i lost), beach soccer which was crazy fun and tiring, and then a lot of beach volleyball. I even entered a beach volleyball tournament which I also lost but was tons of fun.
• As many of you know I've been staying with Maria here in Sweden. 17 years ago she was my nanny back in Canada when I was 6yrs old. Now I'm staying here with her husband and her 2yr old. Wow, 2yr olds are a lot of work. But they have been absolutely wonderful! I'm so glad I got to come here!
• If you work at a job in Sweden for 1 year you are entitled to 4 weeks holiday!
• As well when you have a child the mother gets 450 paid days off and the father gets 100 days.
• They have shop express at the supermarket, where you get your own scanner and just scan your items and pay. Pretty cool.
• This is Hockey Town Sweden. From this area came Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund, the Sedin twins, Nicholas Lidstrom and more. This is also the home of MoDo the Swedish Elite team that some Oilers played for during the lockout if I recall.
• The Swedish language is hard! They make sounds I can't make!! I'm a little worried about Danish now.
• I think that's it. Two weeks has gone by incredibly quick and I've now been gone 8 full weeks. Crazy! Tonight I start my journey towards Norway. I have one night in Oslo on Saturday then off to Stavanger on Sunday to stay with Anne and her family.

Until next time! Leave comments please. They're fun for me to read!

Logan