[StarVegabond]

Do you know where the idea of using a paper carton for storing and transporting milk was born ?

Do you know a place where 45% of the inhabitants of the city use bicycle for commuting ?

Do you know a city where 5000 cycle public parking spaces outnumber the parking slots for other automobiles ?

Do you know a city where 30% of the inhabitants are students and another 15% are doctors and hospital staff ?

Welcome to Lund - City of Ideas - is a place where academia, business, culture and nature thrive within bicycle distance from each other.

I am currently in Lund, this week on a business trip. Amid the busy schedules, found some time to enjoy small pleasures the life has to offer in this part of the world.

I have been on so many business trips over last 10 years. But this is the first time i am trying to record my experiences, As i type this out i am still exploring the city everyday evening ia a -5 deg C weather.

I intend to share my experience with fellow T-BHPians as well as my friends/family who can visit this page when required.

i am adding some glimpses of Lund.



These thumbnails have been proudly found over the world wide web. I will be uploading my own photographs as i visit these places.

Thanks hotstuff for your step by step instructions on attaching pictures in between the text, i seems to have found trees amid the forest atlast.

[iPai]

Had been there last year between august and November. Stayed in a place called Flygelvagen. I work for Ericsson. Have a look at that housing colony! Looks like a resort man Also, if you staying in Lund for some time, do visit a place called Kullaberg. Its simply awesome. Let me know if you want to know any other places we(Colleagues and me) visited.

Also, we used Skanetrafiken for transportation

[StarVegabond]

14th March, Sunday 8:00 PM : Finished Dinner, i prefer early dinner when i am leaving on a late night trip My fairlady (= wife) has already kept all my clothes ready for packing. I also prefer packing my bag myself.

Wife : Passport with Visa ?
Me : Yes
Wife : Tickets, iternary ?
Me : Yes
Wife : Travel Insurance, Medical Insurance ?
Me : Yes
Wife : Wallet ?, Credit cards ?, Foreign Currency ?
Me : Yes, Yes, Yes.
Daughter : Show me the Currency notes ?
Me : Here are Euros 100s and 50s.
Daughter : How many rupees for 100 ?
Me : about 6200 or 1 Euro = 62 RS
Daughter : So you will spend this money in Sweden ?
Me : No dear, i need to convert this into Swedish Kroners, 1 Euro = 10 Swidish Kroners.
Wife : Hotel confirmation, address ?
Me : Yes
Wife : Checked in ?, seat preference confirmed ?
Me : Yes
Wife : Meal Preference given ?
Me : Yes, Indian Vegitarian or Fruit bowl
Wife : Have you sent the iternary, hotel confirmation documents to my ID ?
Me : No, i will do once i am at the airport, i will also send the travel insurance policy document
Wife : How many Business suits ?
Me : Two
Wife : How may formal shirts ?, tee shirts ?, trousers ?
Me : 5 + 2 + 1

Next few exchanges of our conversations are sensored

Wife : Have you checked the weather status ?
Me : Yes, it will be between +5 to - 5 deg C
Wife : Here are the thermal wear and your jacket
Me : Thanks, Can you also give me some pain killers and crocin tablets.
Wife : Here it is along with your toilet kit.
Daughter : Are you flying on Kingfisher ?
Me : No dear, i will fly Lifthansa. I will first go to Frankfurt, then take another plane to Copenhagen, then take a Train or Taxi to reach Lund.
Daughter : What time you will reach ?
Me : Tomorrow evening India time 8 PM
Daughter : Will you get to see the TV in the plane ? Is Luftansa plane similar to Kingfisher ?
Me : No dear, probably they may have one or two common TVs for all people together. we might get headphones to hear the sound.
Wife : You did not buy any ready to cook (MTR) meal this time ? won't you need any ?
Me : No, I am told there are enough Indian resturants in Lund, they also have several Thai, Spanish, Italian resturants as well, I can survive.
Wife : Will you need the Sony Camera ?
Me : No, my mobile phone camera (5 MP) is good enough.
Wife : Have you booked taxi for going to airport ?
Me : No, I will be picked up by the person who works for my client as he accompanies me on this trip.
Wife : What time ?
Me : 11 PM
Wife : ok, you have almost completed your packing, we will go for dinner, you can get ready.

I proceed to my customary shave and shower, they proceed for their dinner together with other guests at home.

Time : 10 PM, My wife is insisting that my daughter gets into the bed as she has her exams on Monday. My daughter wants to remain awake till i leave for the airport. the argument seems to be never ending. So i step in and tell them that i will sleep for some time (30 minutes), me and my daughter get into our respective beds with daugter perstering me to tell her more about the trip. So i tell her the details of the trip, all Ws and Hs etc, but at the end of 30 minutes she is shill wide awake. I leave her in the bed all tucked up, i get ready, recheck all travel documents once again.

Time 11:00 PM, i receive a call from my client that he is on his way and would reach my home in 10 minutes. So i say bye to everyone, reach the gate of the apprartment block.

Time 11:10 PM, i get into the car

Time 11:30 PM, We reach BIAL

Time 11:50 PM, we completed deposited our baggage, completed immigration, security and settle ourselves into Kingfisher sports bar.

Next 3 hour's happenings are sensored, i can only say we had some good Indian food before leaving India.

Time: 2:50 AM, Boarding starts, We are in the Cattle Class (= Economy) queue

Time: 3:10 AM, We settle down in our second row seats in the economy class. Begin to read the inflight shopping manual

Time: 3:30 AM, Plane gets pushed back (= trust the German timing). in next 10-15 minutes we are airbourne

I put on my eye shades and slump into sleep.

[pranava999]

Waiting for some more photos of this beautiful place..

[Jayabusa]

How is the name of this place pronounced?!

[StarVegabond]

Time : 7:30 AM (India time). From the map being displayed on the monitor we are somewhere above Israel. visted the rest room, visited the kichen on board the plane, had two glasses of water, picked up some packets of nuts and retruned to the seat. Realized that i slept through the distribution of welcome drink and munching nuts, later on the distribution of dinner as well.

It seems either i slept like a baby through all those noisy activity or the german crew were so clinical and quiet about it, i did not notice it.
slept again, woke up after another hour, slept again, woke up after half an hour. At hindsight, it seems i went through couple of rounds of this half an hour sleep-awake cycles.

Now my co-passenger was also fully awake. So, we freshened up, waited for the breakfast to be served. After some time, i was served by breakfast, a generously large fruit platter, some bread, some juice and water. My co passenger got the choice of Idli-wada sambhar or omlet.
Breakfast was filling, Tea was more of milk and less of tea. After Breakfast Service, there was a round of on board shopping, the crew enet around with a trolly full of arifacts mentioned in the shopping manual.

Soon the pilot anounced that we would land in some 30 minutes, the cabin was prepared for landing. the German crew was very professional, clinical throughout. my co-passenger was missing the courtesy and service levels of singapore airline. anyways we are traveling west when the world is looking east.

As I was in aisle seat, i do not have any snaps of the outside world prior to the landing.

We landed at 8:30 AM (local time) at Frankfurt airport. De-boarding was very swift. Our next flight was at 12:25, so we went through the immigration, security check and were directed to the gate from where Sandinavian Airline was operating their service from.

Frankfurt is one of the busy airports in the western world. For the neotravellers, following link provides more info about this airport

Frankfurt Airport | Homepage

Frankfurt Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The second link shows a wonderful photograph of the airport from air, i thought it is worthwhile to add it here with due credits.



At our gate, we bought a cup of Cappuccino and a Croissant



While enjoying the hot cuppa with freshly made criossant, we could see Luftansa everywhere in the airport.



Later on we actually moved near to the boarding gate. We still had more than 2 hours for our flight boarding. Our conversation continued.

Soon we found a plane approaching the gate



and plane near the aero bridge



and aerobridge getting connected with the door of the plane



and pilots switching off the engine



This picture below is a special tribute to a BHPian who strives hard to keep the Jokes thread clean. Mr. Condor, I never knew in his part time he also owns an airline



After several conversations later, our boarding was announced. We were
moved to a bus and taken to a MD82 plane parked elsewhere.

[ampere]

The only thought I get when I see these huge birds is : How the hell they can fly for their size?

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by iPai

Had been there last year between august and November. Stayed in a place called Flygelvagen. I work for Ericsson. Have a look at that housing colony! Looks like a resort man Also, if you staying in Lund for some time, do visit a place called Kullaberg. Its simply awesome. Let me know if you want to know any other places we(Colleagues and me) visited.

Also, we used Skanetrafiken for transportation

thanks iPai for your suggetions, my stay is only till saturday this week.
so i may not be able to visit any place outside Lund due to busy business engagements.

Originally Posted by pranava999

Waiting for some more photos of this beautiful place..

sure pranava, more photos will be posted, please give me some time to pendown the explanation as well.

Originally Posted by Jayabusa

How is the name of this place pronounced?!

It is L..U..N..D. U has to be spelt as U and it should not be spelt as A.
DO NOT try to convert it into hindi, it is a Swedish name, keep it swedish.

Originally Posted by ampere

The only thought I get when I see these huge birds is : How the hell they can fly for their size?

How the airplane works ?, refer to this link to learn more

Howstuffworks "How Airplanes Work"

[amitk26]

Lund university is one of the oldest in the world did you visit the lund museum during your stay ? Were you there for EMP ( now ST-Erricson) or for Sony Erricson by any chance.

The old two is just like typical European town and you can cover it on foot in a day

PS : The U is spelled with two dots on top called umlada and pronounced as uhh with a grunting sound. This vowel is typical of Germanic languages ( Swedish is very close to German)

[iPai]

Well, i work for EMP, to be precise, ST-Ericsson.

StarVegaBond, to which company do you belong?

[StarVegabond]

Originally Posted by amitk26

Lund university is one of the oldest in the world did you visit the lund museum during your stay ? Were you there for EMP ( now ST-Erricson) or for Sony Erricson by any chance.

Originally Posted by iPai

Well, i work for EMP, to be precise, ST-Ericsson.

StarVegaBond, to which company do you belong?

Hi amitk26, iPai,

my preference is not to disclose/discuss personal details on a public forum.

yesterday evening we drove through the university campuses, i have only 2 evenings here, today and tomorrow, i will certainly try to visit university museum.

[esteemer]

Seems to be a good read. I'm hooked to this thread.

Do update us soon Sir.

[raghu230506]

Yeh Arvind,

Good going have fun.

It reminded me all those MC'D visits I had in Frankfurt Airport during my transits. I personally like this Airport because of the view it gives of Runway and flights.

[mpksuhas]

Great travelogue. I was in Lund working for EMP for some 3 months during 2007 end. Simply amazing place. Hope you were able to go to Ven Island , Copenhagen and all. Were you there during Malmo summer festival?

[WindRide]

Originally Posted by StarVegabond

.....
DO NOT try to convert it into hindi, it is a Swedish name, keep it swedish.

Maybe this deserves a thread of its own - "Beautiful places visited, names of which are too embarassing to repeat".

Imagine returning from Lund, get into a crowded local in Mumbai to go home and cross paths with colleague ...
I can image the ensuing conversation ...

He - "Hey old chap, nice to see you back. So, how was Lund"
<Train too noisy>
You - " Errr.. what"
He - "I said how was Lund. Lund. Lund"
You - " Err ... "
<won't this damn train go any faster>

Unfortunate. But unavoidable.