Wednesday, May 18

I was looking forward to today because of our visit to Karolinska Hospital and Institute. One of Europe's biggest and best hospitals, Karolinska is located on more than one campus in Stockholm. This year, we visited the campus in Huddinge. It was just a bit south...a very short train ride...from where we are staying. Our host was Ann Britt Bolin, M.D., chief of quality and patient safety at Karolinska. She graciously spent two hours with us. Part of that time was a tour of a new newborn ICU just built in the hospital, with a neonatalogist, Lars (sorry, I didn't get his last name), who helped design and now runs the unit. It was beautiful. Each room was built to allow both parents to spend nights with their new infant...no charge to them. In some cases, the rooms had a pull-down double bed in it. In some, their was a hospital bed for the mother, if she needed it, and a pull-down single bed for the father.

Dr. Bolin also spent a lot of time telling us about Karolinska and some of what they are doing there.

Dr. Bolin and Lars talk to the group about Karolinska. By now, you should pretty much know the members of our group.

We were to meet with another individual from Karolinska, but had a little misunderstanding of where to meet and so that didn't happen. We did enjoy lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

Later on in the day, most of us took a boat trip to Fjäderholmarna, a small island about a half hour away from Stockholm. It was a very nice day and the trip took us into a beautiful group of islands and along the edge of the Vasa Museum and Skansen, where we visited yesterday. At Fjäderholmarna, we just spent a leisurely afternoon walking around the island. We got back from there around 5 pm and at that point, everyone had free time and were on their own.

On the boat ride to Fjäderholmarna, a reporter from the New York times took Lisa's picture and interviewed her about our trip. He was doing a story about 36 hours in Stockholm. It should be published within the next 10 days, he said. A few pictures will be in the print edition and many more online.

On the island of Fjäderholmarna.

11 skeleton heads of Pike (a fish, and these are pretty big), 11 members of our group??? We weren't sure what that meant.

 Another shot from the island with Heather, Marcy, Stefanie and Meagan.

Of course we all had to visit the underground whiskey distillary on the island. It goes pretty far back and at one point, you see all of the equipment and barrels used there. Eric, Heather (a little tipsy), Meagan and Stefanie were there. Nathan and Marcy are in the background.

After the trip, six of us just wandered through an area of town we hadn't yet visited. Jeremy, Nathan, Lisa, Eric and Dave are all enjoying their Swedish fish, brought by Eric from America. He wondered if they would taste better here. They do.