Karlskrona and EuroTour Day 1 & 2

A few days after visiting Koenigsegg, to the horror of the dog who had never been on a boat before, Johan and I took his boat out on Skälderviken Bay to make sure everything was working for the upcoming holiday season.

 (Johan attaching the GPS and Atomic having no idea of the ordeal he was about to experience)

The weather was a nice 19-22 degrees (nice by swedish standards)

On Wednesday the 20th, I caught the train over to Karlskrona on the East coast of Sweden to stay with David the Kiwi exchange student living there overnight.

 (Karlskrona's central park)

 (Karlskrona town Square)

Karlskrona is home to Europe's second largest town square (after the Red square in Moscow) which is surrounded by old, grand churches and buildings. This is because when Karlskrona was first established, the king of the time (Karl XI) had intended for it to be the Capital of the Swedish Empire because of it's central location (at the time Sweden possessed a large chunk of germany and Poland). Karlskrona is built over 30 islands in an easily defended archipelago a short distance from the Baltic States and Germany. As a result it is the home of the Swedish Navy and the National Naval Museum.

Karlskrona translate to "Karl's Crown"

 (Town hall)

David and I were also joined by Micah (USA) and Yuki (Japan) for the night and later by Tyler (USA) who was the other exchange student living in Karlskrona.

 (A decorative canon outside the Royal Naval Base)

(Sweden's largest wooden Church - seats 4000)

 (David Made us all buy a triple scoop icecream at a local store - needless to say the servings were generous. I'm holding David' as well so he could take the picture)

 (Sweden's first Submarine - the dock at Karlkrona is one of the worlds main sub-builder with contracts with the US Navy)

(The canons of the Naval Base pointing out towards Germany and, funnily enough, an American battleship anchored just of shore)

We visited the National Naval Museum.

 (Old bow models from Swedish sailing ships)

(david and his new friend)

The next day was the day before Midsummer eve and as a result Karlskrona became home to a giant town market covering the entire town square and all surrounding streets. I had photos on my phone but it was stolen in Berlin (see below) before i moved them to my computer.

 (Sweden is that safe that the market could be policed by a cardboard cut out...)

The next night I went with the Sandbergs to the Storvarg's (their name translates to "big wolf') for Midsummer eve dinner. It was raining and quite cold but the company was good and many drink-songs were sung to the taste of Schnapps and Herring.
Later Ville and I discovered that the Storvarg's neighbour was the owner of Barnoff, one of the nightclubs in town, and we were able to get free VIP tickets for that night. It seems most teens like to go clubbing on Midsummer as to escape the embarrassment of their parents as we also found Victor Ekvall and a few of his friends there as well as most of the Waterpolo team.

A few days later I found myself packing for EuroTour:



Day 1 - Malmö - Berlin


At 7am I found my self driving down the highway to Malmö to begin the 17 day Eurotour.

Arriving at the Grand Hotel (our start and end point of the trip) I found myself surrounded by close to 70 exchange students, some I knew from Åre and Kiruna and others I had never met before, all eager to get the trip underway. After a briefing by the tour guide we all loaded onto the bus and began the long drive to Berlin.

 (Last glimpse of Sweden as we cross the bridge into Denmark)

(Sven - USA and Eligh - Canada)

The bus and ferry to Berlin took over 8 hours and we arrived late afternoon into the City.

That night, after settling into the hotel, we were taken to a traditional German restaurant for dinner.

Eligh and I sat at the "Adult/Chaperone" Table...

 (Eligh and Julia watching Felix demonstrate his extreme maturity)

(At least we had Lars to balance out Felix's maturity levels)

That night also happened to be the night of the semi-finals match of the European Football Championship between Germany and Italy so we left the restaurant and wandered the streets of Berlin in search of a bar to watch the game.

Day 2 Berlin

The next day we started the day by doing a quick bus tour of Berlin, stopping off at the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall

It was at this point of the buss tour that I took control of Felix's Canon 300D SLR... (I didn't relent control until we reached Paris)

Our next stop was Check Point Charlie followed by a viewing platform over an old Nazi base

 (Joe the Kiwi)

 (Daniel - Aus)

After the Bus tour we were allowed to walk around the centre of Berlin as we wished. Our guide recommended that we try the local specialty; Curry sausage... essentially a hotdog with curry powder in and on it. The Chips actually were really nice with Curry powder. It wasn't my favourite experience in Berlin but certainly one I hadn't expected.

We then walked around the town centre, sticking fairly close to Alexander Place.

(RJ - USA making a long distance call to his parents back in the US)

That night was the night I lost my phone. I had it in the hotel room when I got back from our walk. Left the room and went down the hall to Eligh's room then after half an hour realised I didn't have my phone. We searched both my room and Eligh's but couldn't find it anywhere which leads me to suspect someone may have taken it :/

Koenigsegg Automotive

After months of waiting, I finally was give the opportunity to visit Koenigsegg Automotive, producer of (arguably) the fastest production car currently in existence, the Agera R.

The Agera R has a theoretical top speed of 440km/h. This top speed remain theoretical as there currently isn't a race track in the world with a straight long enough to get the car up to it's top speed (it needs approx. 10-12km). I suggested to Christian Koenigsegg that they bring the car down to Australia where we have a single flat straight piece of road that's 146km long, stretching across the bottom of WA.

Funnily enough, the only racing strait that comes close to what they need is the 9km test track owned by Koenigsegg's biggest rival Volkswagen who produce the current record-holder the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport (top speed 431km/h). Naturally Volkswagen doesn't want the Agera R to take their record.

(Koenigsegg's 2012 Agera test model parked outside the factory)

 (Magnus and the Agera)

(Christian Von Koenigsegg overseeing the latest car to come off the factory floor)

I discovered that it takes a minimum of 20 weeks for a Koenigsegg car to be assembled and painted. This time increases depending on the custom specifications of the buyer. Koenigsegg allows it's customers almost unlimited control over the appearance of the car as well as the ability to storage space and custom leather. One customisation outlined to us was that if a customer wishes to have a fully visible carbon finish on their car it would require the carbon chassis and all other visible carbon parts to be specially made so that all seams and joins line up with no overlap, prior to the assembly of the car. This extra attention to detail justifiably means that there is a significant increase in the cars price. Otherwise all colour schemes are under the same price of over $1.5 million AUD.

 (Robert Serwanski - Koenigseggs one and only test driver and holder of all current Agera R records; 0-100km/h 2.9s, 0-200km/h 7.5s, 0-300km/h 14.53s, 300-0km/h 6.6s... In other words, the luckiest man alive)

 (Ms. Koenigsegg who gave us the tour)

Let summer begin...

It's been a strange two weeks since my last post... I've done quite a bit but I feel i've just been relaxing the whole time.

On the 1st of June, Magnus the club president organised to visit hit son's school to give a presentation on Australia to his yr 7 english class. They then let us watch their rehearsal of the final scene of 'Grease'. 

Afterwards, I joined Magnus and his family for afternoon Fika and then Dinner.

 (Magnus' Family outside their home in Magnarp)

A few days later I joined a group of Vittra kids on a field trip to Liseberg (the largest theme park in sweden) up in Göteborg. 2 hours sitting on a train...

(Axel and Mattis)

(The tower is the "AtmosFear" a 146m free-fall ride which I was the only game enough to go on it 5 times)

(The Kannon)

 (An old wooden Roller-coaster called the Balder with a 70 degree slope at the start)

(Hanna on the left won a 2kg box of Chocolates)

For my Birthday my host family put together a nice BBQ and i spent the afternoon baking a Pavlova and reading the last chapters of the third book in the Millenium Series (Girl with the Dragon tattoo series). The Sandberg's were kind enough to buy me a Sverige Hoodie you will probably now see me wearing in photos from now on.

 (le patriotic Pavlova)

Wednesday the 6th was Sweden's National Day which I spent at Hembygdspaken, Ängelholm's community farm/ historic park with a petting zoo, museum and café.

Thursday morning was spent in Ängelholm's church to celebrate the graduating Vittra kids and bidding them farewell. This was followed by 10-pin bowling with some friends to celebrate my birthday. I didn't loose, which was good, and was even holding 2nd place before Simone got a double strike and a 8 pushing her above me.

Friday was a big day in Ängelholm because it was the day that all the 3rd year students finally graduated. I attended a friend from waterpolo Viktor's graduation party.

 (Viktor; very happy with himself)

 (Adam-centre and Ludvig-right are on the waterpolo team)

 (Oscar-centre is Viktor's little brother who is also on the team)

 (Toby... also a waterpolo player)

 After the Party a group of us made our way into town to meet up with the other students graduating.

Long story short; we were out until about 4am celebrating.

 (Viktor, Oscar and I waiting for a Taxi at 4am)

 (the sun starting to rise in the distance)

On Monday all the RotEx students in our district (bar Matt Kramer and Tomoji) gathered at Rosie Bliss' place on the beach for a final get-together/final goodbye.

As you can imagine... the usual shenanigans ensued.

(Yuki: our little ninja-angel)

((David and his pony)

This Friday I am finally going to visit Koenigsegg with Magnus.

Here is a GoogleMaps screen-shot of the route we will take for the EuroTour in two weeks