After we’d seen everything in the garrison itself, we went to see Rödbergsfortet, or the Red Hill Fort – a part of the fortifications around Boden. These were built in the beginning of the 20th century, and the last one was in active military use until 1997. These days they’re a tourist attraction only; you can get guided tours inside.

The finale of Garrison Day was a mock battle in a small field next to the garrison. The public were all issued hearing protection upon arrival, and then we lined up behind the red-and-white warning tape.

It was a bizarre experience to see a grassy field, bordered by a parking lot, a playground, and hundreds of spectators, suddenly be dotted by clouds of smoke, while the ground shook under our feet.

An Archer unit made things go boom, and handful of tanks and other armoured things drove across the field and through a deep ditch. An infantry unit defended the contested area.

Exhibitions of military equipment were dotted around the garrison area. We spent a couple of hours getting acquainted with all sorts of vehicles and equipment. I learned a whole lot of terminology and interesting facts.

We started out next to the main square, where the A 8 regiment were showing off their stuff. Ingrid’s regiment is the I 19, an arctic armoured and and light infantry regiment (i.e. tanks, and troops on the ground). The A 8, their next-door neighbours, are an artillery regiment (i.e. cannons).

The Archer artillery system, I now know, is valued for being extremely mobile. It can be driven at 90 km/h, then stop, extend supports for stability, aim, fire, pull in the supports again, and be gone again in about a minute.

Next to Archer (and its friend Arthur there were tracked motor vehicles, almost like small mobile huts on treads, which you could actually get inside.

The driver’s seat was neither spacious nor ergonomic.

What it did have was lots of knobs and switches – the way I wish more cars were designed. Seriously, I’m so on board with military design principles. Just like I love the way that the troops all pack their backpacks the exact same way, so that anyone can locate the first-aid kit in anyone’s backpack, and that there are specific, pre-determined ways of expressing direction and distance to prevent confusion and misunderstanding.

To the other side of the main square there were several rows of older tanks. The oldest one was from just after WW2 – still in a driveable state. All of them must be, since they have clearly been driven here for today. Also: the foundation under the asphalt here must be something extra, to support all this weight.

The newest of the old tanks was an S 103 from the 1960s. This one was open, and interested visitors could climb inside, which we of course did.

Across a field, there was all the modern equipment of an armoured unit. Tanks, of course, but also all kinds of interesting special equipment. There’s an armoured recovery vehicle, which is like a giant, armoured version of a tow truck. There’s a whole portable bridge, the Krigsbro 5, which is transportable on trucks and can be put in place in 3 hours.

The S 122 is the newest model of tank in the Swedish army. This one we were not allowed inside of.

We tried out a recoilless rocket launcher simulator, which is supposedly like the real thing, but instead of shooting rockets, it shows you on a screen where the rocket would have hit. We were all very good at aiming.

Of course we also got a chance to see Ingrid’s dormitory, and their (identically organized) lockers.

Fun fact: inside the entrance to the dormitory building, there was a boot care locker. It had all the signs of getting serious use. I knew the soldiers all need to look clean and tidy at all times, which includes well-polished boots, but I had never given any thought to just how that happens.

Garrison Day in Boden. I went overboard with the photos so I’m splitting this day into multiple posts.

The night train arrived in Boden at 05:42. At that time, of course, absolutely nothing was open in town – Espresso House only opens at 8. The train station was just about the only place I could hang out at. Especially since it was also still dark, and raining.

The walk from station to town was grey and wet.

Ingrid had sent me a map of where to go, which was more useful than expected. Google Maps absolutely knew where the I19 regiment was located, and a whole bunch of people had already gathered at that main entrance half an hour before the gates would open, but we were all turned away because that entrance was not for us.

The day started with a ceremony at an open square in the middle of the garrison area. All the troops were already lined up, and had been since before the gates opened.

A colonel held a speech, a chaplain held another one. An orchestra played, and a flag was carried around. The audience huddled in raincoats and under umbrellas. It looked like we would get a very wet day, but by the end of the ceremony the rain had stopped, and there was no more of that during the rest of the day.

The ceremony was not very exciting, except for people falling over. Twice, someone in the front row of the ranks collapsed. Not enough practise standing at parade rest? The group leaders standing in front of the ranks were clearly prepared – they promptly got them upright, led them away behind the ranks, and the rest of the column immediately took one step ahead to fill the gap. A third person, likely feeling that they were also about to keel over, walked to the back of their own initiative.

Afterwards I located Ingrid and got some nice photos of her in her natural environment, so to say.

Her uniform is mostly made up of giant pockets. She is carrying a whole backpack’s worth of stuff in them – everything from a first-aid kit to notebooks, snacks, spare gloves, etc.

On a sleeper train to Boden, for the Norrbotten regiment’s “Garrison Day” or open house day tomorrow. A full day in Boden, seeing Ingrid in her everyday environment.

The train is almost fully booked – I guess a lot of parents and other family members are heading up there for Garrison Day.

Today was “getting to know each other” day, by way of a treasure hunt on bicycles.

We took a couple of pre-booked boats from Strömstad to South Koster island. It was windy and a bit cold, but the views were nice.

On South Koster, we all got bikes and went off on a treasure hunt kind of thing. We’d all been divided into teams of about 8 people beforehand, with a mixture of people in each team, both geographically and departmentally. There was a website with a map, and markers on the map denoting places where we would do various tasks. The tasks were predictably mostly quite cringeworthy. “Take a photo of your team to illustrate teamwork.” “Record a team cheer.” “Answer this quiz with questions about Evidi.”

There wasn’t much time to complete the tasks; our team was half an hour late for lunch and still didn’t manage to get all of them. Hence the lack of photos. I guess you could say that a little bit of teambuilding happened? We spoke to each other, but didn’t have an awful lot of time for that either.

Lunch was at Kläpphagen, which at least served better vegetarian fare than Strömstad Spa, although that bar was very low. (Yesterday’s dinner at Strömstad Spa had a barbecue theme. The meat-eaters got at least four kinds of grilled meat. The vegetarians got the meat-eaters’ side orders: potatoes, corn on the cob, sallad. That’s it.) This place did have a delicious vegetarian dish, but I ended up eating salmon because there was no vegetarian protein. Seriously, are these people all living in the last century?

Got back on the boats and were ferried back to Strömstad. Lovely views again. And not a drop of rain! The weather forecast promised heavy rain off and on through the day, and I had been mentally preparing for a grim day out. But somehow we managed to miss all of the rain. There was none of it while we were on the boats out, none while we biked. Then a serious downpour while we were eating, which was over before lunch was over. No rain on the way back; pouring rain again in the evening.

As of September 1st, Active Solution becomes part of Evidi, a larger group of consulting companies. I don’t yet know enough about them to have a firm opinion on whether I like this or not. Or, rather, I don’t particularly like it, because I intentionally joined a smaller consultancy instead of going for one of the big ones, but I’m not all that upset either – maybe I will learn to like it. It is what it is, for now.

Every summer, Evidi gathers all their employees for a weekend in the countryside. Today was day 1 of a three-day weekend in Strömstad.

Well, first I got a three-hour train ride, an hour in Göteborg, and two more hours on a bus. I had time to see Göteborg cathedral, a few canals (including one with small flowering, floating, artificial islands) and a second hand shop.

Evidi is mostly a Norwegian company, even if they have some of their business in Sweden and Denmark. The mood in Strömstad was seriously dampened by the death of Norway’s King Harald V.

The half-day of conferencing we did was par for the course. Leadership figures going through presentations telling everyone about how great the company was and how well it was doing.

And a case study to be discussed and solved in small groups. Too bad that all the 47 small groups were crammed in one giant conference hall, and 90% of everyone was speaking Norwegian. I barely heard half of what people said due to the noise levels, and understood barely half of that, so I had no chance of participating in any of the discussions. Good thing I had brought my knitting.

I have – at long last – added notes to all my blog posts from the Japan trip. Yes, it was half a year ago. Better late than never. I got most of it done in April, then forgot about it, then dreaded doing the rest. Today I sat down together with Ingrid (who has her own, physical scrapbook from the trip). We went through our notes together, refreshed our memories, filled in each other’s gaps, and I got it done. Phew.

If you want to have a browse, here are all of the Japan posts. In reverse chronological order, unfortunately. I don’t see any easy way to show them in chronological order; might figure out a technical solution for that some other day.

I seem to have missed my photo today so here’s one from earlier.

Things I bought in Japan: shoelaces in flower-patterned fabric. A tiny bit of Japan, a tiny piece of beauty that I can sneak into my everyday life. Every time I tie my shoes, I get a little spark of joy.

I don’t usually buy souvenirs or even local crafts that are just for looking at. Instead I look for things that carry with them the character of the place, that I can use, in my daily life rather than on special occasions – even though few such purchases can be used quite this frequently.

Woke up early because I usually do. Also because I didn’t sleep particularly well. There was a noise from some kind of machinery in our hotel room – from my walking around I suspect that our room was situated right below a machine room – and I’m no longer used to sleeping with earplugs all night.

Anyway, this gave me nice views of the sunrise. The sun reached surrounding parts of the countryside and the town well before it reached the hotel terrace, since we’re on the inner edge of a crater lake and there’s a mountain to the east of us.

By the time the sun reached over the top of the mountain, it was quite high up already.

The first half of the day was knowledge activities again. We spent most of our breaks admiring the view over Lago Albano.

After lunch we had a couple of free hours, most of which I spent visiting the papal palace of Castel Gandolfo.

This morning I was viewing the palace from our hotel; now I got to look back from the palace towards the hotel.

Inside the palace there was a museum section, mostly exhibiting paintings of past popes and mannequins showing costumes of papal staff, such as the traditional clothes of the guards. Not particularly interesting.

A tall, austere staircase led to the pope’s residential quarters – mostly large rooms with paintings and tapestries on the walls, and luxurious chairs lining the edges of the rooms. Not much more interesting than the previous rooms.

The highlight of the palace was a huge tapestry from the Sistine Chapel, one of ten designed by Raphael. Five by five metres, showing the Conversion of Paul.

The information board in the room talked about the making of the tapestries – cartoons painted by Raphael and his workshop, tapestries woven by the workshop of Pieter van Aelst, this much money, this many years of work – but nothing about what happened to them later. Wikipedia tells me that the tapestries were looted and either burnt for their precious metal content or were scattered around Europe. Only in the late 20th century was a full set was reassembled again, of tapestries produced from the same cartoons after the first set.

Back outside I had just enough time for a quick lunch. My go-to solution in situations like this – limited time, tourist town, beautiful weather – is to find a local bakery and buy whatever local bread-with-toppings they have, and then eat it at a park bench or similar.

In some countries this can be a triangle sandwich, in others a wrap, pierogi or pasties. Here it was a kind of flatbread with grilled tomatoes. A pinsa, I guess. I didn’t find a park nor a bench, but there was a shaded little walkway from the town centre down towards the lake, with a very sitting-friendly low wall to one side.