Sweden, Soccer & Sunsets

Its been nearly 4 weeks since the move to Sweden and although I wasn't excited about the move things are going pretty well. The course has kept me incredibly busy and I am finally able to remember the names of a few more people in my course due to various projects and excursion group work.

A few weekends ago Morten and I tried out the weekend NaturBus service. You can buy an all day ticket for the bus for 40 kr, about $6 I think and it takes you to various nature areas that you can't really reach on regular busses and trains. We got off at the nature area near Torups Slot (Torups Castle). Here is a photo of the castle.















As we are both forestry people we spent some of our time trying to identify some of the interesting trees around the property with the book I got on my birthday describing tree species in Northern Europe.

I also learned the other day that the reason why so many of the houses in teh Swedish country side are painted ocher, red, and a brownish color is due to the country's history of copper mining. Apparently some 700 years ago copper mining was started in Sweden and it was a huge industry here. It seems that when the copper is processed some kind of oxides are the result and that oxide left over stuff was used to make these house paints.

The company called Stora (meaning Big) also got into forestry because they needed wood to build the mine shafts and make housing for the mine workers. But they then had too much forest and so slowly moved out of the copper business and more into forestry. In the late 1990s the now forest company Stora merged with a formerly state-owned Finnish forestry company called Enso - now called StoraEnso. Interesting huh?

As for soccer, or futbol as its called here, there is a nice group of people (many from my course) that get together to play on Tuesday and Thursday evenings - perfect! I find it MUCH more fun than running on my own and its a nice way to meet some new people at the university. We have a lot of people show up including a guy in his 50s and his dog Knut (a common dog's name in Sweden apparently). This guy puts all of us to shame with his endurance, I feel like a real slacker in comparison.

Another great thing about starting to play soccer is that I end up biking home around 7pm as the sun is going down. It wasn't until I started playing soccer that I notice how incredible the sunsets are here. You can see clearly from the beach here in my town of Lomma the sun setting over the sea toward Denmark. Most nights so far that I have gone down to the beach the sun has been a brilliant deep red-orange color as it descends for the evening. I tried to take some photos capture it but these just don't do it justice unfortunately. I think you will like the photos nonetheless. I never get tired of a beautiful sunset....















Wouldn't you just LOVE to be on that boat? What a nice view they must have had!