Day - 12 Curling It Up

Our final day in Sweden... I woke up a tad bit late this morning therefore I missed breakfast before curling.. Luckily I didn't get to hungry while curling. Curling was extremely fun today, we learned all the rules from our great instructor. The object of the game is to get your rock closest to the middle of the target. Although you are able to knock the other teams rocks out of the circle or bounce them off one another to get yours closer to the middle.

You alternate throwing 8 rocks between the teams. Usually there is one thrower, two sweepers and one captain. The thrower would start on the block and slide themselves off and let go of the rock before the foul line. The Sweepers job was to sweep the ice in front of the rock in order to warm up the ice to get the rock to keep sliding. The captain called out whether or not to sweep as well as were they want to the thrower to shoot the rock towards. We got to play all these positions luckily as we switched thrower every two throws. Once again we had the same teams as we did for both cooking competitions. Of course we dominated once again, winning two games in a row! Curling was such a great experience I would love to find a place to play this up near school, it seems like a very peaceful game!











On our way to the bus stop after curling we had a mini snowball fight in the street. It was a blast and at one point one of the girls was chasing someone and absolutely bit it in the snow and flipped right on to her back. She wasn't hurt so don't worry, but I thought she was about to buckle over again from laughing so hard. It was pretty funny especially since she was chasing me!

Once we boarded our bus we all decided to split up and go shopping for some gifts for family members. We went to this really nice leather shop where they had make things for you. They have a lot of really nice things in there and I would have really loved to get my parents some things from there but I think if they would have found out how much it cost to get them they would have killed me! It was a pretty big bummer but I think I found a pretty good gift that they should like.

That night JJ brought us to a place called Heaven 23rd. It is a very nice restaurant on the 23rd floor of a hotel in Gothenburg.

It looks out over the whole city and is absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately the lady who greeted us was pretty rude to JJ. We had spoke to a manager last night about reserving some tables for our group and she kept telling us that we needed to leave. Finally someone came over and told us that we could sit at the bar. Our group is pretty resilient so we all let it bounced right off of us and had a great time! We tried their special king fish sandwich witch was delicious.

After we ate we went to a piano bar where Alex absolutely killed it, playing some good classical tunes. Everyone loved it and gave him a big applause. This was a fantastic day and a fantastic trip! JJ and Susie did an awesome job planning this trip for all of us. Every business and every dinner were both fun and informative. If I could I would go on this trip over and over again. I wish it wasn't over already but it is time to get back home and go back to work. I hope one day I am able to come back and visit this wonderful place. I will never forget the people on this trip and all of our great memories that we created!

Day - 11 Jay Fu

Monday morning Burt from ABB robotics came to visit us at the hotel to talk to us about a variety of different topics, due to a last minute cancellation of SABB. Burt came in and first talked to us about the differences in the work places throughout the world. This was very interesting because for some cultures having a job you love is a huge contributing factor and in others it is not. Burt told us a story about an R&D program he was trying to set up in India. He figured that there motivation to work hard would be similar to that of Sweden. Which was give these employes jobs that are very cool and giving them freedom to work with these robots. It failed though he said which doesn't make sense because many of these workers are well paid and are highly qualified for these jobs. This is because there they want a job where they can constantly get promoted, to show that they are successful in their job. Burt created this job layout so there weren't as many job promotion opportunities as his workers would have liked. Another topic we talked about was the

transition he had to take when dealing with generation Y. He said that they were somewhat of a pain but they get there work done and are very passionate about there work which for some of the older employees get upset with. One of his examples was that a few new gen Y managers wanted to change a big part in an operation to try and make the process more efficient. To many of the older managers it seems like they are trying to make to much noise to quickly which gets on a lot of the older managers nerves. This is something I will be encountering in the work force in the next few years so it was an interesting topic to cover.


Our next stop was at Stylt Trampoli a design and marketing company. This company was awesome! They did a lot of very cool things, they do designing and marketing for many hotels and restaurants. They have won quite a few awards for their fantastic work recently and are becoming a big name in the European market. Our speaker went through a number of the companies recent workThey were all breathtaking and thats coming from a guy! These places they designed were beautiful and the stories that went along with them were pure gold. One of their favorite stories the made is for a restaurant called Jay Fu's the Amasian Steak House. Jay Fu is about a asian martial arts guy who wants to get into a Kung Fu Hollywood movie. He makes it to Hollywood only to be the punching bag for an up and coming Chinese martial artist. Becoming very discouraged he decided to open up his own restaurant. This is the background story of the restaurant which I thought was extremely creative and cool.

 This restaurant before they asked for the help of Stylt was about to close and Stylt came in and gave them a new look and created a memorable experience for the customers which in turn drew a larger volume of them boosting sales. This was a very cool presentation as well as experience. I learned a lot from listening to the different ideas and problems that Stylt encounters but well worth the visit. I really hope they enjoyed having us and allow the group next year to visit again as well because I know for a fact they will learn alot.

Later that night we found a bar with an open mic so a group of us went out and got the Piano man Alex Nelson on the keyboard! He absolutely killed it everyone in the bar was going crazy about how talented he was, especially our group that we brought out there. Another big surprise was Nick Chin! We all found out that he was a fantastic singer and apparently has an album out! He sang a few songs up on the stage and blew everyone away as well. Of course I cant forget Connor's tambourine and morraca skills just having a blast up there every song. Wow what another great night, got to hear some great music and hang out with a bunch of great people, I couldn't ask for anything more!

Day-10 Nordstan Day 2

After a very very fun and late night at Per and Osa's home the snooze button was hit quite a few times. I finally managed to get out of bed and made it down stairs in the basement to our new blogging spot. As we blogged we decided to make another trip to the wonderful Nordstan mall.

With a group of about 8 of us we started our journey back to Nordstan mall. This time though we were accompanied by 3 to 4 girls so hopefully us guys could get some opinions on the clothes that we were going to buy. We spent quite a bit of time in there looking for glove hats and jeans. Throughout the day our group got smaller and smaller. I ended up with the two fashionistas Megan and Taylor, and my roommate Mr. Kiser. Joe and I decided we would let the girls help us pick out some clothes to try on in H&M. I went into the dressing room with maybe four clothes and I probably tired on one of them and then I heard a knock on the door. I opened the door and there was Megan and Taylor holding at least 10 more pairs of clothes for me to try on! I couldn't believe they found so many in a matter of minutes that I was gone. Oh and not only did I have to try them on but they sat out in front of the door and I had to walk out and show them every shirt they had picked out... It took forever but it was surprisingly fun and I actually picked only clothes out of the pile of 10 they gave me. I cant complain my wallet didn't get hurt and I got some nice clothes.

We had to hurry back for our Iron Chef competition back at the hotel. We made it back just in time to figure out that we were on the same team as we were for the Swedish Taste competition. Right away we were thinking repeat champs! We went to the store around the corner and got some supplies together for our starter that we were making. We made a brochette dish with caviar, onions and apples with vinaigrette. Our two expert chefs Nick and Peter did a great job of putting together this dish and showing Megan and I how to cook it. We came back and blew everyone away with what we had made! I believe that we may have taken the W again in this even though our teacher didn't name anyone the winner.

Day 9 Nordstan

After an extremely late night on Friday, Saturday was a very slow morning. Somehow I managed to wake up at 8:00 A.M.! Tyler, Joe and I walked over to breakfast around 9 and got a good meal in before we went to the largest mall in scandinavia called Nordstan.

It was very interesting to see all the difference in clothing compared to that in the United States. The clothing in many of these stores was very expensive but it was great quality. Everyone in Sweden dresses extremely well, there is not one person here who doesn't wear a nice sweater or button up shirt out. You also notice how much better shape everyone is in here. There are small gyms all over the city here in Gothenburg. The mall was not nearly as big as we thought it was going to be although it did have what I thought was a very cool layout. Every store usually had a second floor or a basement you were able to go into. Even though everything was pretty expensive due to the currently weak U.S. dollar we all still managed to find some good deals.

After we went shopping we went on a trip to Per and Osa's house. Per spoke to us on Friday and invited us for dinner at his house. It was about an hour ride out there but totally worth it because there house was absolutely gorgeous.

There back yard had an amazing view of the pacific ocean and the inside of there house was just as beautiful as their ocean view. Per and Osa were such great hosts as well as they worked very hard to get dinner ready for us and picked us all up from the bus stop to bring to their home. For dinner they served some wonderful crab, crayfish and shrimp! I have been craving some good crab all trip, dinner was fantastic and Per bought some wonderful beer called Classic from Demark. It was easily one of the best beers I have ever had, Per mentioned to me that he had to go all the way to Denmark to get it because they don't sell them in Sweden. So it was quite the treat to try one of those. After dinner Per and Osa had us all go upstairs and we all spoke about some of our favorite parts about Sweden and some dislikes that we all had. It was very cool because once we got to

Olsa and Per they told us some stories about when they were in the states. Per and Osa were so cool some of there stories about there travels were crazy. They like to go to some remote places. My favorite part about Per and Osa's was that they treated all of us like we were there family! I hope when they come to visit in the states they come up to Kenosha so we can take them all out for dinner. This visit to there house was so awesome and was my favorite part of the trip by far. I learned so much from Per and Osa that night it is scary. It was such a great night that I will never forget.

Day - 8 A Smart Eye

Smart eye was our first business that we would be visiting today. Magnus our speaker for the day was another former colleague of our professor JJ when he worked for ABB. Magnus was so

enthusiastic about the services that Smart Eye is providing for everyone. Smart eye provides a device that can gather data for a number of different fields of business. Currently Magnus stated that the automobile industry has the greatest demand for their service. Their smart eye technology tracks the eye movement of someone in front of their cameras. It is a very cool product, and some of the things it can do in an automobile are incredible. For the auto industry this device can track were a driver is looking at on the road. This can help identify where to place certain signs on the road and how much a sign can actually affect how the driver is able to perform. This goes into another thing that they hope will help keep the road safer. That is if the device detects that you are sleeping the car will make a very loud noise through the audio system to wake you back up thus avoiding falling asleep at the wheel. Another one of the interesting things that their customers have been using this product for is animals. Magnus told us how a zoo wanted to use it on some wolves that they were studying to track their eye movements. I thought this was a very cool concept, although I don't know how they would translate the data but thats why I am in business and not a science field! Magnus let us try some of their products one where we would go through pictures and we were able to see where our eyes looked around the pictures. Another was a driving simulator game. Some of our students sat in this car simulator and the smart eye device would track things that they were looking at while driving the car to collect data. Overall a very cool developing product and I cant wait to see

where this product will be in a few more years!

After this visit we had a two hour break before our next business meeting. Seven of us decided to go out and grab some food at a little place called TinTin. I have been craving a burger for the past few days so I decided to go with that. Let me tell you it was one of the best burgers that I have ever had! All the food here is so great, I can't say that I have had anything bad to eat while staying here in Gothenburg. Of course though TinTin is known for desert so after we all finished our lunch we ordered a variety of deserts. I ordered some chocolate fudge cake and boy was it good. The chocolate was so sweet and had just a great texture to it. After this we went out and got some things from the grocery store for that night.

Finally it was time for our final meeting of the week. We were going to be introduced to Per, Another one of JJ's friends from ABB. Per currently works for Getinge Group as the product development manager. Getinge is a global medical technology company. They provide equipment in the health and science fields. Per gave a fantastic presentation, he spoke about some of the great things that have happened while in the position he currently holds as well as some of the hardships and struggles. It was great to hear about some of the struggles and tough spots that he was in while there. So far we have not really heard anything negative that has happened to any of our speakers. Per presented to us that business is not always going to be easy but if you battle hard enough you can find a way out. I think this is a great lesson for all of us not just for going into to the business field but for when we take on life in the next few years. I talked to Per after about this and he again said that life and business can be crisis management and the only way to beat it is to take it head on. I love this approach and I hope when the time comes that I will be able to take on a situation like Per has done over and over again. 

After our meeting with Per we all went back and tried some new beers that we bought from the store earlier that day. We hung out in the girls room for quite some time and just hung out with everyone. Right before we were about to leave our professional pianist friend Alex decided to
go out with a sports jacket on! So the rest of us decided to follow suit and change in to sport jackets. This delayed us for at least another hour, but we had a blast and finally we made it to the Queens Head our final destination for the night. It was a fantastic night and I wish it could have lasted forever! 

Day 7 - Iron Chef

Last night was a late one as just about all of us were staying up late trying to finish some work for classes. Once we hit 1 A.M. a few of us needed to take a break from three hours worth of work so we started a few pool games. It was nice and relaxing. Although after these games of pool I was done and ready to pass out. This led to an extremely slow start this morning. Before I knew it though we were on our way to our first company of the day.

Vela was our first stop today and they are a patent and IP firm in

Gothenburg. They have quite a few highly qualified customers. Right away when we got there we signed a confidentiality form stating that we could not take pictures of release any confidential information. Basically we went over how patents and IP’s work for companies. I thought it was a very interesting presentation we covered some pretty funny patents that are currently out on the market. But he also went over some of the rules that keep companies from keeping monopolies for to long. We also went over options that companies have with their patents. Such as selling them or trying to keep competitors out of the market. It was a very informational experience and I learned a lot of new information.

SKF the best ball bearring company in the world. They have so many different types of ball baring equipment from things such as an airplane to something as simple as a kitchen blender. One of their biggest consumers is Volvo Car company where they create ball bearings for the engine as well as what seems to be ABB robots as a follower. This was our next company that we visited in Gothenburg. We didn’t actually get meet any of the board members or the CEO. Instead we went on a tour of SKF where we looked at some of the products that SKF produces. They had a Audi engine as one of the displays and on the screen they had a picture of a car and you could make it transparent so you would be able to see inside of the car and it would highlight which parts were made by SKF. I thought this was very cool that they were getting this specific when trying to show there parts. The next stop on our trip was the SKF factory. We were not allowed to take pictures during this part of the tour but we got to see a lot of ABB robots in action. It was very cool to actually see a factory that produced some larger industrial goods. Overall SKF seems to be a very strong company and our great tour guide did an excellent job of showing that.

Our dinner tonight was so awesome!! We went to a place called Swedish Taste. At Swedish Taste they have Chefs help you make dishes of food. It was so cool to actually make your own full meal for once properly. We were split up into four groups of four. I must say right off the bat I knew I had a fantastic group! I was with Megan, Nick, and Peter and they all had some background in food. I was the only one left out of that. We had four different meals a starter, a soup, a main dish, and desert. Our group was given that main dish… we absolutely killed it! Peter and I started off cooking some of the reindeer meat. We seasoned it with some salt, pepper, chili and cinnamon spices. After we finished the seasoning we went over and started cooking it. At first we were a little skeptical about how well we were cooking it on the stove but as soon as one of the chefs came by and said they looked great Pete and I both knew it was going to be delicious. While I was waiting for the Reindeer to cook I helped out where I could to help Nick and Megan with their dishes. Not for very long though because shortly after this Pete and I realized that we had two more items to make. So we both picked one, I picked the black cabbage vinaigrette. I must say I am not a big fan of any type of salad but boy was this good! I learned quite a bit about how to cut some of these vegetables properly and season the salad. After we finished all of our meals we sat down and began eating. Once we finished our desert the chefs voted our group as the best made meal. My teammates and I were thrilled we were picked we all had a great time working together and winning that prize!

Day - 6 Auto Adapt

Wow what an incredibly eventful morning... I don't think anyone could explain it any better than my roommate Tyler Wagner. "So the morning started off on a not-so-good note. Let's start with waking up...usually the girls next-door wake us up when the showers are open, but that didn't happen. Luckily, we'd already waken up out of habit but our alarms didn't seem to go off…dodged a bullet there. Moving on to breakfast when everyone was all settled and grabbing a quick bite to eat, I decided to add what I thought was a hard boiled egg to my breakfast. Well...it definitely was not a HARD boiled egg but a soft-boiled egg. Next thing I knew the egg was all over the table, my suit, and my tie...just great. So we all rushed to do what we could to fix the mess and the girls came in clutch...gotta love em! After we got that issue resolved we all went to meet up for our private bus that was supposed to take us to the company...turns out that it was running 15 minutes late. So we decided to go sit in our room for a bit and then we all remembered Nick and Alex. We were supposed to wake them up! Immediately we started knocking on their door and telling them they had to get ready quick. On the bright side they had fifteen minutes because the bus was late, but we still felt terrible because we forget about them. As they both got ready we all started to talk about how the day wasn’t looking too good so far and that's when Joe's hand just started bleeding because they were so dry. Then we all started thinking about what could happen next. However, we decided to stay optimistic and the rest of the day went like this..." Luckily the rest of our day turned out pretty well.

Auto Adapt was our one and only stop of the day and let me tell you I know that this is going to be my favorite place we visit while being here in Sweden. After visiting this company and just hearing all of the things they do to help people who are in need is astounding. They are a very close company and they seem as if they are a family. This kind of atmosphere has really sparked my interest in this business. Before today I have always been on the fence about entering in business similar to this. As I stated in my first blog about Bruno I have to brothers who have CP which has forces them to use wheel chairs. We currently use quite a few items from either Auto Adept or Braun one of Auto Adept’s partners from the United States. Growing up using all of this equipment I feel like I would already be ahead of the game in this industry. After talking to Anna – Karin Holmqvist, and Hakan Sandberg and hearing their stories about why and how they entered into this market it has really made me want to become apart of this as well. Thanks to them I now really would like to enter into a marketing position in this market.

While visiting today Anna gave us a rundown of how they interview clients as well as some other HR tasks. For their latest position they had over 700 applications for one position! To me this just shows how wonderful it would be to work in this company. Even though they are doing such a great job they are still finding areas for improvement. Anna stated that in the coming year they want to improve their training program, company principles, and talent management. This company will definitely be able to cover those goals. They have such great managers who are in place there currently.

After Anna Hakan talked to us about how to start a successful business. For those of you who don’t know Hakan has started over 15 business, one of them being Auto Adapt. Hakan has so much incredible knowledge and experience in this field. I did everything I could to take in as much of his knowledge as I could. He gave us a 20 point presentation on how to become successful when starting your own business. As our professor was saying we basically just received our 3 year MBA from this presentation in 1 hr. I was extremely impressed with what Hakan had to say but I was even more impressed with some of the quotes he stated throughout the day. My very favorite was “Its okay to make mistakes, because you need to learn from your mistakes in order to grow”. Hearing this was just astonishing to me, today we have been brought up that if we make mistakes the punishments will be severe. I feel like using this approach allows his employees to have so much more freedom while working. When someone is able to not worry about being punished for making mistakes then that person has so much more opportunity to flourish and become a great employee. Hakan definitely understands this and welcomes it with open arms. Another one of my favorite quotes was his “be proactive not reactive”. This can be the motto for any beginning business owner. Being a proactive person means you create or control a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened. In business being proactive is the best possible thing that you can do if you want to be successful as Hakan stated. These two quotes just gave me so much respect for Hakan and easily proved that he was a fantastic manager in my eyes. Hakan does a very good job of being proactive by constantly creating new goals and checking up on them for each department in his business. This is a great example of Hakan staying ahead of the game by constantly setting standards for his employees to meet that will help the business grow. I learned and incredible amount today not only about business but about life. What a great experience!

After we came back to the hotel JJ had us get together for our group dinner. We went to a restaurant just a few minutes away from the hotel. This seemed to be a very nice place to eat. After seeing this I soon found out the true history of this restaurant. Apparently this building back in history was one of the king’s favorite horror houses. I thought that was a very funny but interesting fact. The food there was terrific as well as the stout Joe and myself ordered. My very first dark beer!