Meeting One

Getting here was the most awful thing with this meeting. Getting up in the morning isn’t that hard but the trip, which in the end was decided to be a bus, which was very strenuous and boring. Not to mention the pain it gives to my back and neck, so it wasn’t pleasant.

Well, the meeting itself was boring as hell. I do believe that the youngest person there after me was maybe twice my age or at least 20 years older than me. I don’t think anyone there were under the age of 40 and most of the people seemed to be grandparents and people close to retirement.

One good thing with this meeting was that there was food before the meeting, free good food, and that they actually hold onto the meeting formalia so it passed by quickly compared to other meetings I’ve seen with that much to discuss. Most formal meetings with over twenty subjects on the agenda often takes at least two hours if the subjects are of discussion value. But here it was close to 30 subjects and even with discussions and corrections of the formulations in some of the documents, it took about one and a half hour.

After my close to three hours in Gällivare it was time to take the train down to Umeå, my body barely recovered from the first trip. Something that is good on these travels is that you have time to read at least. I’ve been reading all too little the past few months and during all that travel I’ve almost read one whole book, which I actually finished today.

Well, one thing is for sure. Going by train is so much nicer than bus even if the train is overly crowded by people. Even tough it hurts my back too if I don’t find a seat, which I didn’t and hand to sit in the restaurant wagon all the way down to Umeå, except for about an hour or so when I had to stand up before a seat was emptied.

Best regards,
Herid Fel