Sweden bound

I spent today in Jyyvaskyla, Finland speaking to a group of Finnish business people. It was the second presentation that I was asked to do since I have been here. I focus on business and team building issues and ways to improve company morale and performance. I was asked to do these talks by Jari who is a member of our management staff for the Crocodiles. I did the first presentation about 2 weeks ago here in Seinajoki for about 15-20 people and my talk today was for about 15 people as well. I speak for about one and a half hours and try and generate some questions and interaction among the group. I have really enjoyed doing this and I'm looking forward to doing another session on July 3rd in Kuopio, Finland.
I was gone for most of the day as Jyyvaskyla is about two and a half hours away by car. When I returned this evening, I started packing for the trip. We are scheduled to leave out around 2 am this morning. It is just after 11 pm now, so we will be driving out in less than 3 hours. We are driving to Turku, Finland which is on the coast. It is there that we will pick up our ferry early tomorrow morning that is bound for Stockholm, Sweden. We have a few days scheduled for Stockholm and then one day in Oslo, Norway. We plan on taking a night train out to Norway to save on hotel costs and then a night train on the way back to Stockholm as well. We also cashed in one of our trip rewards hotel nights in Stockholm for Saturday night, so that is a big help. The room will be free for us and it is normally about a 500 dollar per night room. As it turns out, we will only spend one night in Stockholm and we managed to find a good bargain on a room for just over 100 euros for the night.
We also just recently made some changes to our itinerary. We had planned on spending about 4 days touring around Sweden and Norway, but we were shocked by the prices. On a whim, I got onto one of our favorite travel websites called vacationstogo.com-- I checked their 90 day ticker and ended up finding a Royal Carribbean Baltic Cruise out of Stockholm for under 150 euros per person. The price is for a full cruise, so all lodging, food, and entertainment is included. The nice thing about this is that it coincided with the dates that we wanted to travel and we nabbed the cruise for about 80% off the normal price. Check out this website if you get a chance. You can't beat their prices for cruises, especially on the 90 day ticker. Anyway, the cruise starts in Stockholm on Tuesday afternoon and then sails to Tallinn, Estonia for a day. After that, the boat departs for St. Petersburg, Russia where we will spend a full day. Finally, we have a full day at sea out on the Baltic before returning to our port in Stockholm. We are really excited about the chance to take a cruise again and visit some more intriguing places.
As I write this entry, music is still blaring from the parking lot here at our apartment complex. It is about 11:30 pm now and still mostly daylight. There is a large rock festival here in Seinajoki for the next 3 days, so it is a good time to be getting out of town. I think they get around 75,000 people over the 3 days for the concerts. My windows are shaking as I write this sentence. The kids are still awake due to all the noise. I might have stayed if it was a big country music festival, but hard core metal just isn't my thing. I had better get off here and get an hour of sleep. I am hopeful that by the time I arrive in Turku tomorrow morning there will be a new Stanley Cup Champion. Go Penguins!
Lights out.