The last few weeks…

Has mostly been work, work and work! Me and a colleague has been working in Sweden – Malmö and Strängnäs (approx. 25 minutes outside of Stockholm) in addition to our regular work in Lier and Trondheim. Seven work days a week a few weeks in a row does make a difference – especially when you have to work almost 24/7 to accomplish your tasks.

But it was very fun too, in fact! Malmö is a very nice city. We met a friend of my colleague there and was invited to a nice dinner, a few beers and a city tour. Very nice people indeed! The late night life at “Lillatorget” in Malmö was also very pleasing, with exceptionally good food, beer, drinks and nacho’s.

We had a crisis at the main office during our stay in Malmö though – the power of mostly all our servers and our network systems went down late at night while we were working in Malmö. There were no flights or no way to get back to Oslo quickly so we had to call a colleague from Lier to go to the office during midnight and talk him through several scenarios and solutions to get the network and systems up again. Thanks to very good teamwork the problem was solved however, and everyone could work normally from 8am the next morning. Without the huge effort from our HR Director in Lier the next day would have been extremely hectic! Nobody would have access to our mail servers or terminal servers, and no one at Lier would be able to work either.

Strängnäs is also a very nice city, although – considering it’s size it’s very quiet and “empty”. The streets were almost always empty, especially in the evening. Everything closed early. The big bonus here was that every room in the hotel we were staying was booked except the two big suites that we got during our stay. Apartments with balcony’s, big screen TV’s, stereo’s that you could hook a iPhone/iPod up to and speakers in the roof of every room – even the bathroom and on the balcony! And a jacuzzi… Heaven! From now on, I only want to stay in room 314 of Hotel Rogge!

We had to drive from Oslo to Strängnäs to get there, thanks to the cancellation of our flights because of the volcano stuff happening in Iceland. But it was a quick drive of about 4 1/2 hours each way – mainly thanks to the nice roads in Sweden and the 120 km/h speed limits there… Perfect for quick cruising!

This weekend is all about relaxation. The weather is very nice in Oslo now, so it’s mandatory to go out and eat some food, drink a few beers and go to a pub or something!  Enjoy your weekend folks! Yihaa…

Here’s some photos from Malmö and Strängnäs: