Today we went to the Gothenburg Curling Club to learn how to curl and let me tell you, it is not very easy!I can now say I am not a curler, but I gave it the college try! However, the instructor was fantastic at it! There were many falls involved, but I was one of the few that actually scored points.Since our friend was not able to exchange his dads Chicago Firefighter shirt the other day we went today instead. We went to the Räddningsledning fire station and met with the Chief in Command. When we got there we were just expecting to exchange the shirt and go, but instead the Chief in Command came out to meet our group and asked if we had ever gotten a tour of the station and we said no, so he ended up giving us a tour of the entire station and it is huge! This station has 17 bays, a pool for training, two gyms, and a basketball court. There are 11 fire stations throughout Gothenburg and this is the largest one.This was definitely one of my most favorite experiences from this trip, other than visiting Volvo. One interesting fact that the Chief in Command shared with us is that they average only 1 shooting per day, whereas in Chicago we have 30 to 50. 99% of the time the shootings in Gothenburg are gang members shooting each other and they do not have any drive-bys.A fun fact about the fire departments in Gothenburg is that they all know every job, whereas in Chicago the firefighters only know specific jobs. Everyone is also required to workout on their shifts and they work an average of 42 hours a week. They have 24 hour shifts on the weekends and 14 hour shifts during the week. There are 13 female firefighters at this specific fire station.
Today we also got some shopping done to get souvenirs from our families; we went to Haga and Nordstan area. It was actually very difficult to get gifts while on the trip because we were so busy constantly and had no time to go out and look around much. However, we still were able to look around here and there. The Gothenburg area also does not have many souvenir shops so that made it difficult to find actual Sweden gifts.
Daily Reflections:
– The Gothenburg fire department that we visited has around 6 calls per day
– Curling is much much harder than it looks
– The curling stones from the Gothenburg Curling Club come from Scotland
Off to Sweden We Go 