Gothenburg

After Copenhagen I was originally thinking of stopping by Malmö the next town across the Øresund straight separating Denmark and Sweden. However after some reflection about the stop in Gothenburg I decided to skip Malmö and go straight to Gothenburg so I could spend more time there.

The drive from Copenhagen to Gothenburg was so exciting with a crossing of the Øresund bridge which connects the two countries across the strait. It is an extremely impressive example of civil engineering having a building cost of 2.6 billion € and becoming the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe. From Denmark the crossing actually comprises a 4km underwater tunnel which emerges at an artificial island in the middle of the strait where the 8km bridge starts.

Øresund Bridge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Øresund strait crossing by motorbike.

After the drive I arrived directly to the AstraZeneca Swedish Research Centre to greet some colleagues and work on a manuscript. The next 2 nights I would be staying with Elisa and her partner Staffan. Originally I met Elisa at various Extracellular Vesicle conferences but for some reason our scientific and life paths kept crossing over the last 6 years and I can now say she is one of my closest friends. Interestingly, after already knowing each other for a few years we had the coincidence of working in the same team at AstraZeneca for the last 3 years together with some fantastic people.

Arrival at AstraZeneca.

The first night after working on the manuscript we returned to Elisa's and Staffan's place where they made delicious dinner and we shared a beer over stories. It had been a while, actually too long, since we were last together in Japan and we reminisced about how I was supposedly dying of a mycoplasma infection and Staffan did his best job to decipher Japanese medicines for me at the chain store called Don Quijote, after all he is a pharmacist.

Before Gothenburg, we had last seen each other in April in Japan.

The following day I again worked on the manuscript from the morning until we went out for a nice dinner with some AstraZeneca colleagues. It was so great to have an opportunity to meet and say our farewells in person to my Sweden-based colleagues and they surprised me with some nice gifts and a card to celebrate my next role heading the H-CEMM Extracellular Vesicle research lab in Budapest. There were some speeches and we were all very moved, I believe I saw my scientific supervisor Niek Dekker close to tears but if was he managed very well to fight them back.

Dinner with colleagues.

After that dinner we met with another friend, Cecilia, who is also a Gothenburg based Extracellular Vesicle researcher and we all went for some further drinks.

After dinner drinks.

Next morning I was back at AstraZeneca to put some more work on the manuscript and I had one last opportunity to meet with colleagues over lunch before starting to drive to Oslo.

Overall Gothenburg was quite different from other stops along the trip. I didn't do any sightseeing as I had been there multiple times already but it was a very emotional stop where I could thank in person my colleagues who were instrumental in my scientific development over the last 3 years at AstraZeneca. I will miss working with them but I know our paths will keep crossing and we are already planning future collaborations.

Total travel to reach Gothenburg: 315kms in 3hr30mins Total travel for the trip: 2133kms in 23hr30mins