Wickie the Viking

I am sitting here in my new home in Viborg overlooking the Danish landscape and watching Wickie the Viking on TV. The puzzle is complete…the circle is round….complete happiness while watching my childhood hero…this is the place where I want to grow old :).

Or maybe not…Viborg is not exactly the most exciting place in the world. Maybe I should first explain what I am doing in here in the first place. Since September first I started working as a graduate for Vestas, the world’s largest producer of wind turbines. Being a Vestas graduate means that for the coming two years I’ll be living in three different countries working for different business units within the company, for which I’ll be doing exciting projects. My first rotation is in Viborg, Denmark where I’ve started working in the logistics engineering department for Vestas Nacelles. Nacelles are the part of a turbine on top of the tower, to which the blades are attached and which contain things such as gearboxes and generators. But enough about technical stuff…check the ever reliable Wikipedia if you want to know more about that. Working as a logistics engineer means that I’ll be analyzing different systems and processes and investigating how these can be done more efficiently. Might sound boring…but it is really interesting. Especially because I am able to visit different factories, suppliers, countries etc.

The first trip was to Malmo, Sweden where I had a training/introduction camp together with the other graduates from all over the world (China, India, South Africa, Italy etc etc). It was really inspiring to get to know such a diverse group of people and work together on different assignments. Even the CEO and some VP’s dropped by to give us the ins and outs about the company and to make us even more enthusiastic about the company. Really nice :)…and if you ever go to Sweden…definitely consider visiting Molle (www.grand-molle.se/Hem) close to Malmo.

Now I am back in Viborg where I’ll live for the next 8 months. In the beginning I had a tough time adjusting to this place because, as said before, it’s just not the most exciting place in the world. Especially in comparison with Taipei, Guadalajara and even Maastricht. Yet, the job is fantastic and I am slowly but surely starting to build up a social life here :). Parties like the one I went to yesterday certainly help with the latter haha ;). Yesterday I namely met up with a couple of friend who live about 100km from Viborg. We went to see a race for cars power by wind (with a big wind turbine of the roof)…the race was won by a team from the hogeschool van Amsterdam …typical haha!

In the evening we went out in Herning and we visited a party (the specific party I referred to before) for hairdressers. Mja…rrright! We met some chicks (hairdressers) in a bar and for some strange reason we decided to go to that party, exclusively for hairdressers. I don’t have problems with hairdressers at all, but some of the strange characters at that party I’d rather not have met…LOL. But anyway…it was a very nice evening :)

Oww…and just to confirm some stereotypes about Denmark and the Danes…they do eat a lot of knackerbrot and herring, 99,99% of kids here look exactly like Nils Holgerson, their office hours are ridiculous (from 7 to 3 or from 8 to 4 and not a minute longer) and the weather is most of times even worse than NL (that’s why Denmark is called Mordor from now on).

I am actually not planning to write stories on this blog frequently…this was just a one timer to update all of you on how things are going here and to save me from writing the same story in dozens of emails :). By the way, if you want come and check out Viborg with your own eyes …you’re always welcome to, just give me a call: +45 22 56 78 36. My old Dutch phone also still works, so you can also contact me on that one (0628009655) although I often don’t have it on me.

Hope to see/speak all of you soon again!

Mike