Day off

At these tournaments the typical schedule is 2 days on, 1 day off.  We have had 2 days of games so here we are with a day off - no meetings or anything scheduled.  I planned on getting a really good nights sleep but unfortunately I tossed and turned the whole night, there was a terrible storm going on and the wind and rain hitting my window kept me up.  I met the girls for breakfast at 9 then came upstairs to shower and get ready for the days activities.   The showers in our hotel room are interesting - you either have a giant tub that is about 3.5ft off the ground (no exaggeration there) or a shower where the shower head is chest level and the entire thing is surrounded by mirrors.  My room has the latter option.

As I mentioned yesterday, Kim, one of our supervisors, is from Copenhagen.   Since Copenhagen is only a 35 minute drive from Malmo he planned a full day of touring for us.  It started off with a typical Dutch meal at a cafe near his home.  We had a mix of items on our plates - a fish with a really good sauce on top (loved), some roast beef over rye bread with another interesting sauce (ok), a chicken salad type thing with bacon (ok), some potatoes with a mustard type sauce (not a fan), an egg with another unique sauce (loved) and some crackers and brie (excellent).  Then they brought us out this decadent apple pie type dessert which was awesome. One of the unique things we observed at the restaurant was multiple people left their baby strollers, with baby in them, outside while they sat inside and ate.  Every once in awhile they would go outside and check on the baby.  In talking with Kim and Anna (from Norway), apparently that is standard operating procedure over here.   File that one in the category of different customs that would NEVER work in America.  After lunch we walked to the metro station to take the train downtown.   It was freezing and super windy, we were all huddled up at the station trying to keep warm (yet another reason we found the baby thing so strange).   It took about 20 minutes to get downtown where we had a canal cruise scheduled.  Prior to boarding the boat we walked around the Royal Palace grounds and took the typical tourist pictures with the guards.  Katie even got one of them to crack a small smile!  The canal cruise went all around the city and pointed out some of the main attractions.  A bunch of us decided we want to try to go back on our next off day and see these things from land.  After the cruise we walked around a very pedestrian friendly area of town with lots of shops and cafe's.  It kind of reminded me a little bit of old town Zurich.  As we were walking we found one of our supervisors in a Fish Feet Spa.  What is that you ask?  It is where you sit with your feet in what is basically a fish tank for 25 minutes.  The fish apparently suck the dead skin off your feet and the water helps reinvigorate your skin.   You do this while sipping a glass of champagne.  Bianca said it felt strange but very good...not sure I want to try it though! We all met in front of city hall to head back to Malmo.  Copenhagen is a really cool city and I definitely want to try to spend a little more time there before heading home.

On the way back to Malmo the Swedish girls let us know that they were able to secure tickets to the Malmo Redhawks hockey game that evening.  From what I understand there are many divisions of the Swedish pro leagues but the Swedish Elite League is their equivalent to the NHL and the Swedish Hockey League is equivalent to the AHL.  The way they work it is the last place team from the Elite League plays the top team from the other league in a 7 game series with the winner playing in the Elite League next season.  This was game 6 of that series with Malmo trying to move up to the Elite League.   If I had to guess, the stadium holds around 15,000 people - it was a little smaller than the Wells Fargo Center at home but not much.  If you didn't know you were at a hockey game you would have thought you were at a soccer game.  They were beating drums and constantly clapping and chanting.  It was a lot of fun, they fans were really into it!  Some other interesting observations from the game were as follows:
-Advertisements everywhere.  On the ice, players jerseys, refs jerseys - you name it they had an ad on it.
-To start the game they drive the puck out to center ice on a remote control mini zamboni!
-They play full scale commercials on the jumbotron in between whistles.  One of which was a guy wearing a cup and getting hit with a puck there!  We were cracking up every time they played it because we had no idea what it was for!
-The Redhawks goal song was the same as the Chicago Blackhawks and they were also the same colors.
-There was significantly less hitting than you see in the NHL/AHL.
It was a really cool experience and I'm glad we had the opportunity to go.  After the game we took the train back to the hotel and am now getting ready to crash.  It was a long and fun day off but it is back to work tomorrow!