[StarVegabond]

@smartcat : I have not experienced the game you are talking about, can you attach some screenshots of the game that looks like this town ?

@pranava : Each human is a researcher in his own right, because we keep searching for our life's goals, some re-search how to earn more money, some research how to get more knowledge, some explore how to have better fun, while some re-search for true meaning of life.

moving forward..

Following explains About Lund University from their website

Lund University was founded in 1666. Today it is an international centre for research and education that has approximately 38 000 students.
Lund has an excellent academic reputation with a large number of visiting professors and international students.
Lund is consistently ranked among the top 100 universities in the world and was ranked as the top university in Sweden in the most recent Times Higher Education ranking.

Currently this university is ranked 67th in the world. Imagine a town where 38% of the population are student. that seems to be one of the reason why the city is so vibrant, and is often referred as City of Ideas.

I have already uploaded the photograph of university main building. The actual faculty and labs are spread all across the town. It is like Lund Town = the University Campus. The below attached PDF can give more ideas about how vast spread is the campus.

CampusMap.pdf

As far as Indian Universities are concerned, I have seen /visited several campuses Pune/Mumbai/Bangalore universities, IIT/IIM campuses, Symbiosis Pune, IISC Bangalore as well as BITS Pilani. Probably except BITS Pilani Campus, there is no other university in India which boasts so much of importance in the local town.

Ofcourse, there is no better fun than the student life. I have expereinced part time student life (between 2005-07) again after working for 10 years, when i was persuing my masters program at BITS. Again i got an opportunity to stay at IIM-B campus twice over 5 months course in 2004 as well twice at a reputed UK business school in 2006

Now i might be too old to again experience student life or Is it possible to get an action replay ?, was the question in my mind when i went through the info about Lund University.

[jaguar.runs]

Reminds me of the first trip to Sweden. Visited Eskilstuna & Gothenburg. Stayed in Bolinder Munktell Hotel, the place where Volvo CE was born. Hotel stays in the same place where the BM factory was before.

Sweden is a one beautiful place. Unfortunately all my visits were during fall/winter. Not a good time if you want enjoy the beauty of Sweden. Cannot complain as all of them were business trips for Volvo ME.

[StarVegabond]

There is a saying in hindi "Choti Muh, Badi Baat" means, "small mouth, big dialogues". I would not like to be found arrogant in commenting about a different culture/nation, hence i do not dare to compare Swede way of living with an Indian way of living. I have tried to capture some aspects observed by me during my short stay, I am sure this is just a minute tip of the iceberg.

First thing I observed is panctuality : If meetings start at say 2 PM, it starts indeed at 2 PM. people are in the room couple of minutes early. It is consistent with everyone. There is a saying, if one does not respect time, time does not respect him/her. Swedes seems to live this philosophy.
Second thing i observed was equality, the society as well as workplace seems to be more flat in hierarchy and more orintend towwards individual accountability. Escalations are not expected, people expect the issues to be discussed and resolved without much escaltion.

Equality also reflects in the way decisions are made, Leadership decisions are to a large extent based on consenus as everyone opinon is considered worthwhile. This reflected in the way they hosted a dinner for us, where the location and type of the resturant was discussed formally, we were shown the location on the internet, checked with our food choices e.g. vegitarian etc, closeness to the local hosts to travel back to thier respective homes etc etc.

Swedes come acrosss as quiet or shy. Soft spoken Swedes might appear dis-interested, but in fact they are giving others the opportunity to speak. People tend to listen more than speak. Never a person is interrupted while he is speaking, but people wait for him to finish what he is saying before they ask a question or state their opinion.

There is an old principle of jantelagen, which more or less means you shouldn’t try to appear to be better than others. In practice, this means Swedish people don’t tend to boast or draw attention to themselves — and they don’t cut in line before it’s their turn. This also refelcts in their habit of queuing or waiting in line. We visited a electornic retail shop to buy some power adapter, we found an interesting system there. There are only three attendents on the shop. the customers need to take a paper token ("nummerlapp") with a number on it. The available attendent will press the number and call using the electronic display. one needs to wait till his/her number is called.

I have attched some photogrpahs here which gives between view of the system.

actual token dispensor


Display showing the token number


A small retail shop publishes its own catalogue



As one can see the retail shop is very systematic, they even publish a book giving all the description of the items available in the shop, price, ordering code etc. this book is available free of cost to the customers. all this info is available on the internet website as well.

Moving forward with Swedish culture, Swedes typically try to avoid open conflict. e.g. neighbours may not complain to you directly about the noise, bit they will leave a note instead in the mail box.

Our hosts told us an anecdote, where a swedish company had acquired a business in US which also had a factory in US. the Swedish management used to go for annual review to US.

The first year after listening to a loud and animative presentation by the US team, management simply said, okay, you are doing good, but we want you to improve on these, these and these aspects. US management thought "All izz Well",

The next year the story repeated, swede management said, your progress is okay, but we want you to still improve on this this and this. Third year when US team repeated their loud and animative presentation, the management said since after 3 years yo have not improved, we will close the factory and fire everyone.

The US team was all thinking they are doing great and was not expecting such drastic action from swedish management. they said to US management that you told us we are doing well then why close the operations ?.

The actual fact was the non confrontanist way of swedes was nto well understood by the US team, they did not understand polite message and dis not give a serious thought to it.

Such could be a swedish way of passive aggressiveness.

Swedes are better speakers of english, My personal opinion is they are second to Dutch in their mastery over the english language among europeans.

As per official sweden government website, most of the swedes believe in equality and fairness.

More info about Swedish culture can be found on below government website.

What Swedes are like - SWEDEN.SE

[SmartCat]

Interesting stuff on Swedish culture and mannerisms. One doesn't hear about this country too often in the press. Did you see lots of Volvos there?

[jaguar.runs]

I would like to add one more thing about Swedes. Excellent Road manners. Very considerate while driving.

They always give way to others and stop when a pedestrian is waiting to cross the road.

We had to travel from Stockholm airport to Eskilstuna in the middle of the night. There were a few vehicles on the unlit dual carriage highway and whenever our vehicle approaches another car or truck on the road traveling at a slower speed, our driver would immediately put his head lights on low beam and switches to high beam only after he passes the other vehicle. The other vehicle would switches to low beam as soon as we overtake them and switches back to high beam once we are out of his high beam range.

[aargee]

@Starvegabond - I'm very much impressed with your travelogue & at a point of time, when reading from landing to Copenhagen till arriving at the room, I felt a sense of experiencing all these;

What you said about time factor is more than true; Fortunately, I got my lesson when I was in my 12th grade & Thanks to my computer sir (I keep repeating this mantra whenever & wherever possible); so I was more than happy when I was in US to see everyone respecting my time too.

Regarding the subtle comments on Sweedish on US, yes, I've heard the same from British too. I have a feeling that generally, Europeans, if they say, "good, but improve = you're doing bad"; but in US, "you're doing bad = you're doing bad"; means US people take the face value while Europeans tend to look things beyond words.

Great narration & I'm also getting excellent information on this thread & Thanks for sharing; hence my token of appreciation that you can find under ratings

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by smartcat

Did you see lots of Volvos there?

Very apt question at the right time, i was about to write about the most legendary brand from Sweden Volvo

Yes, We found lots and lots of Volvo cars for family use, along with VW Polo for their individual commute. I found lots of small cars probably due to the fact that most of the pupulation in Lund are students.

Volvo means 'I Roll' in Latin, and the arrowed Circle is merely the conventional map sign for steel. The circle and arrow represent the shield and spear of Mars, which are also an alchemical symbol for iron.



Each of the "classical" planets was associated with a metal: Sun=gold, Moon=silver, Mercury=quicksilver, Venus=copper, Mars=iron, Jupiter=tin, Saturn=lead.

More about Volvo and Swede car history can be found in the link below
VOLVO SWEDEN AND SWEDISH CARS HISTORY | DIRECTORY OF MOTOR MANUFACTURERS | VEHICLE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY | CONCEPT CARS

Volvo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In India Volvo has established itself as a more of a BUS & TRUCK brand.
There is a saying "first Impressions are the lasting impressions". We will have an opportunity to see how fast Volvo overcome this perception and can establish as a car brand in India.

Apart from Volvo, Saab is another legendary automobile brand from Sweden. more info about SAAB can be found on wiki page below

Saab Automobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

More info about the swedens car manufacturers, locations etc can be found in below links

Category:Motor vehicle manufacturers of Sweden - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Later on i will post some photographs of the cars i found, i need sort the pictures to compile uploadable pictures

[Chevy_lover]

Hey Star, nice photos and great narration. I am enjoying it! Keep the pics flowing. Do you have an idea how much the Volvo cars cost there?

[ikoneer]

You first impressed me with your City ownership experience and then comes this great travelogue.

Good narration and you have captured the details excellently.

what phone do you have, the pictures are very good for a mobile camera.

[MX6]

Good one's there. There's also supposed to be train between denmark and sweden. I also read that it's a challenge as both countries use different voltage electricity and drive on different side (of the rails) or something like that.

[iPai]

Best part is the train called Berlin Night Express.

It is between Stockholm and Berlin via Lund and Malmo.

The Sea separated Sweden and Germany. So how does the train go??

The train is "shipped" to Germany!!

Imagine, some of my colleagues who went to Berlin from Lund, didnt know this. They got up in the middle of the night. Looked out of their compartment window to see some stationary cars, buses etc and realized that they were actually in a ship!!! Some 4-5 hours journey in the ship, the train is back on tracks in Germany and continues to Germany. Fascinating isn't it??

[StarVegabond]

Hi ikoneer, MX6, aargee

Thanks for your appreciation, i am happy that you liked this travelogue.

Hi, jaguar.runs

yes, you are absolutely right about thier driving mannerisms, i will write more about it later on when i cover the subject in detail with some snaps.


Staying with legendary brands of Sweden, Most famous as well as controversial brand has been Nobel Foundation which distributes Nobel prize.



Some of the award decisions were not popular and many have been protested as well. One of the glaring omission has been Mahatma Gandhi who has been the biggest promoter of non violence (=peace) in the last century. Probably Nobel Prize did not deserve Gandhiji.

more info about Nobel foundation can be found below.

The Nobel Prize

More to come

* Our experiments with Food in Lund
* Swedish food
* an example of day today life of a Swede in Lund
* About Sandwich war
* some more glimpses of Lund
* some photographs of automobiles , driving practices
* visit to Malmo, neighbouring town & beach
* and much more more

[jaguar.runs]

Wow.. You are planning to go in detail... Nice!

Do let me know if you experienced "Skål" situations!

[MX6]

Originally Posted by iPai

Best part is the train called Berlin Night Express.

It is between Stockholm and Berlin via Lund and Malmo.

The Sea separated Sweden and Germany. So how does the train go??

The train is "shipped" to Germany!!

yeah. it's fun. Your train gets on to a ship. Across english channel, buses gets on ships or on to trains that go under the chunnel (as the channel tunnel is called)!
I was referring to the train between Denmark and Sweden that runs on the Oresund bridge itself (of which photos are posted in this travelogue).

The rail section is double track and capable of high-speeds up to 200 km/h, but lower in Denmark, especially in the tunnel section. There were challenges related to the difference in electrification and signalling between the Danish and Swedish railway networks. The solution chosen is to switch the electrical system, from Swedish 15 kV, 16.7 Hz to Danish 25 kV, 50 Hz AC right before the eastern bridgehead at Lernacken in Sweden. The line is signalled according to the standard Swedish system across the length of the bridge. On Peberholm, the line switches to Danish signalling which continues into the tunnel. Sweden runs railways with left-hand traffic and Denmark with right-hand traffic. The switch is made at the Malmö Central Station, which is also a terminus. For the new Malmö City Tunnel connection a flyover will pass one track over to the other side.
The only other place where I've seen a flyover passing tracks from one side to another is Aamchi Mumbai. The harbour line goes over the western near Khar!
The trains are dual voltage as they have to operate on both swedish as well as Danish voltage systems as stated above!

[StarVegabond]

Italia il Ristorante seems to be the No 2 resturant in terms of resturant ranking in the town. Located at Stora Fiskaregatan 6-8, Lund. This true to the name, resturant serves the best italian food in the town. The website link is attached below.

italia

When i was browsing the website of this resturant, i found out that it has an outside sitout, which would be my choice if i would visit them again in summer or spring. I have attached here a photograph of the place found on the website.



We visited this resturant on the first evening of our stay. 20 minutes walk in the near zero degree C, almost froze us. The warm italian welcome and offer of the table (we had not made any reservations) made us feel very good. The male italian waiter was very hospitable, enquired whether it is our first visit to the town, enquired about our food preferences, showed us different options in the menu, made some suggetions about the food options, noted down the order, repeated the same for our confirmation, told us that it would take about 20 minutes to serve the starters.

Soon the conversations re-started, the waiter appeared with a basket of Italian bread, butter and glasses of water. I simply love the fresh, warm italian bread with the melting butter on it.We were hungry, we immediatley did the needful.

Soon the starter (veg tartar) and fermented grape juice were served. Second course was veg pasta for me and some non vegetarian dish for my co-passenger. Desert was the Tiramitsu.

In my view, Italian Tiramitsu is the numbero uno desert in the world, much much ahead of ice cream. For the beginners, i have attached here the photo (found on www) of penne pasta and Tiramitsu



For me Italian food is the default option when Indian food is not available. Italian food is closely behind Indian food in terms of taste, but much more ahead in terms of presentation, retaining the taste of natural ingredients viz herbs etc. No doubt both Italy and India are well known for their cuisines.

Coming back to this resturant, i would rate the food as one of the top locations i have eaten. It was indeed worth the money. Service was with very personal attention. i would certainly recommend this place.

After this dinner, it was bit difficult for both of us to walk back to our hotel rooms.

Life is Good