Different worlds

This past week I made a work trip to Sweden – flying into Copenhagen then driving.

In a short 1 hour and 15 minute flight I’m transported to an entirely different world – different language, different money, different food, different-looking people. Even things like different types of plumbing fixtures in the hotels. This is such a contrast to home, where a one hour flight gets me to Cincinnati.

We drive from Copenhagen, over the Oresund bridge (http://www.roadtraffic-technology.com/projects/oresund/) that links Denmark and Sweden. The bridge was completed only 7 years ago, is 16 km long, and has the longest cable-stayed span of any bridge in the world.

The drive to our destination in Sweden takes 3 hours. It’s the first real sight of snow for me this year. It’s cold and the countryside seems bleak, but there is a beauty about it – the snow, trees, open spaces, gently rolling hills. We see a group of kids playing a game called “bandy”, which looks like field hockey only on ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandy).

At dinner with some of our Swedish colleagues, we talk about some familiar topics: football (soccer), football (the Super Bowl, they had seen who won), how they feel they are taxi drivers for their children’s activities.

At 5:30 AM we’re awakened by trucks outside the hotel and workers setting up for an outdoor market on top of the snow. They tell me there is a saying in Sweden that there is no bad weather, only bad clothing.

We are visiting a customer – an aluminum manufacturer with a new plant in a town whose name I can’t even remember. It seems like nowhere. This is a puzzle to me, that there are these places that seem like other universes. We have no idea they exist until we stumble on them. They’re inhabited by people whose lives carry on in parallel to ours, without us having any knowledge of each other. Somehow people got there and decided to stay. Someone decided they should build an aluminum plant. At this moment someone in that town is likely sweeping snow off the sidewalk.

The guys at the plant are friendly and welcoming – I get the feeling they are genuinely happy to have us visit. The environment is casual - a very different feeling from Germany. We eat in the cafeteria, and yes, they eat pickled herring in Sweden (I was not in the mood).

Our last night, in Copenhagen, the hostess at the restaurant is named Gunhild. She speaks perfect English, first with a perfect British accent when talking to my boss who is British, then later with an American accent when talking to me. I don’t know if this was conscious or not. She says she lived in Sweden then went to the U.K., to Thailand, back to Sweden to a British school, to New York, then back to Sweden. If someone asked you to picture a beautiful Scandinavian girl, it would be her: fine blond hair, delicate features, fair complexion.

It would be enough to make you want to live with the cold, the lack of daylight, and the herring.