Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

We enjoyed an amazing breakfast at our hotel.  Some of the highlights were a wide variety of Swedish foods including breads with lingonberry jam.  Eld Rimner was our first stop of the day.  This facility teaches people who have a serious interest in food about the local history and ways of preparing regional food.  It is known for its "small scale artisan food from the Jämtland region" or Mathantverk fran Jamtlands Ian in Swedish.  We also enjoyed our first Swedish fika here.  It is tradition to stop for a small pastry and a cup of coffee or tea twice during a work day--once in the morning and once in the afternoon.  We are all very much fans of this fika business and intend to import it to the United States.


We left Eld Rimner and then traveled to the top of the Östersund water tower.  Nine stories above the city is a restaurant with a stunning view of the landscape below.


Our afternoon stop was to a company called Vericate.  This company's motto is to "verify and educate." Their goal is to explore eco-friendly technologies.  We were able to experiment with their electric-only snowmobile and car prototypes.

A 100% electric snowmobile prototype

We were also given a presentation about their current project called Green Highway.  Green Highway is exploring how an electric-only infrastructure could be created and run realistically in a world where gasoline costs cripple the pocketbook (gas is running about $9 a gallon here) and take precious resources.

Dinner was at a local Rotarian's home.  We enjoyed fabulous homemade chicken liver pate, Norwegian cod, and Swedish liquor, or Punsch, parfait with raspberries (grown in the garden outside the house) and lots and lots of great conversation.