Swedish Life

       I have been living in Sweden for about 3 weeks now, and I am finally in some sort of routine. Most of our games are on Saturdays at 3 p.m. and then Sunday is free. On Mondays we have training at 6:20, beginning with knee strengthening exercises for the first 20 minutes. They implemented this for the fall season because there were many ACL injuries in the first half of the season. Tuesdays we have training a gym in the city center. Our team has a strength trainer who gives each player an individualized workout to do. We haven't had our assessment yet, but so far we have done treadmill sprints, cycling, and followed along with our teammates' strength and agility programs. Wednesdays and Thursdays we have training at 6:45 p.m. and Fridays are free. We also have the option to have individual training with one of the coaches at anytime during the week. My roommate, Marissa, and I have been going about twice a week at 10:30 a.m. Our coach has drills planned for us, but we can also suggest areas we need to work on. The intensity of the training sessions vary depending on the day and the week. The best part of the sessions are that we are always moving and constantly have the ball at our feet.
    After the morning sessions, Marissa and I go to lunch at a restaurant in the city center where they have set up free meals for us. The restaurant looks like an old house and is very quaint inside. The food is set up in a buffet style with a salad bar and soup, and a choice of 2 different entrees. The salad toppings are always different but always delicious. There are a lot of black bean and pepper dishes, sprouts, feta cheese, cooked mushroom dishes, olives and feta cheese. The entrees are usually some sort of fish and meat dish with peas and cranberries, and boiled potatoes with a heavier cream sauce. Last week they served 2 different types of salmon, one in a sweet sauce and the other was a type of casserole with cheese and spinach. It was hands down the best salmon I had ever tasted. On the menu today were homemade Swedish meatballs that were the size of my fist. Needless to say, I stuff myself every day during lunch and don't often have to eat again until after training.
       In my spare time I have been watching the Olympics on our TV, which is smaller than the screen of my laptop. I can't understand anything the announcers are saying, but I can pretty much figure out what is going on. We get about 4 channels which have been dominated by the Olympic coverage, but now it is back to normal programming. One of the stations frequently shows American movies in English with Swedish subtitles, which is a big difference from Germany where they dub the voices to German.  I have also been able to watch a lot of American TV shows on my laptop. When it is nice out I walk down to the harbor and sit in the sun on the rocks there. No matter what time of the day or week, people are always at the harbor trying to soak in as much sun as possible.

These are some pictures from the harbor. There are a couple restaurants and ice cream shops there, but people mostly head to the giant rock islands. You only have to walk 5 minutes over a tiny bridge and you are there. 

There are a few docks and structures built to jump off of into the water. It is very different from Florida where you can slowly wade into the ocean and get acclimated to the water. Here, you just  have to jump off giant rocks into the water and hope that it's not too cold, which normally it is.

View from the rock island back to the harbor with all the boats. 

A statue near the rock island.

This is a map from the hotel Web site showing a layout of the grounds. The reception area has a restaurant, a mini golf course out front, and is also where we walk to do our laundry. We are in the red building, right where the arrow points to Studios 14-25. All of those beige colored buildings in the middle are school/daycare centers for little kids. It makes it pretty hard to sleep in when there are little kids right outside your door yelling in Swedish. 

This is where I live. There are actually four different rooms in this building and you have to walk around the back to enter our room.