No Doggy Bags...

Hej,

Last post from Sweden. Wow. Hard to believe that 3 months have passed already!

There are seven of us flying home to various US destinations tomorrow (Denver, Austin, Atlanta, Salt Lake, and Indianapolis), plus European colleagues flying off to other projects around the world (France, Australia, England, and Brussels), so we went out to dinner last night. We had traditional Swedish fare, which apparently I am getting used to. I had a Swedish dish called gubrora (without the accent marks, it just doesn't look right). Basically, it translates to "man mix". It's basically egg salad with anchovies. Probably a once in a life time experience for me, but it wasn't bad. I also had Swedish meatballs (the real kind, not the Americanized version).

When it was all said and done, my eyes were bigger than my stomach, so I asked for the leftovers to be boxed up. And was abruptly ridiculed by my European colleagues. Apparently doggy bags are solely an American thing - one that they thought was only done as a joke in TV shows, for that matter. So, when going out to eat in Europe, err on the side of "too small" rather than "too large, but I'll take the rest home". :-)

It is a little bittersweet leaving here. Mostly sweet. But I did make some good friends out here, so don't be surprised if Ashleigh and I end up with some visitors with funny accents. :-)

See you all soon!

Jared

p.s. I think I will just keep the blog going from the US, if anyone is interested...