Audrey Bay: Enjoying Quiet July in Stockholm

It has been a very busy couple of weeks. Last weekend, I made a trip to Scotland with my mother who visited me for eight days and this weekend I will be heading to London to visit a friend. All of the traveling has me exhausted, but this will be my last trip until my final trip home.

July is here and Bonnier is starting to feel like a ghost town. Most employees have started to head out for the summer holiday. Soon there will be almost no one left. That is one very big difference between Sweden (and most European countries) and the United States. Here, most people get five to six weeks of vacation a year and normally at least four of those weeks are taken all at once usually during the month of July. My co-workers here keep asking me if I am going on holiday after I return home, but I have to keep reminding them that we don't have that. They can't begin to imagine a life with only two weeks of vacation. :) I must say that I am pretty jealous about this. I think it must be nice to just have that time to get away (no matter where you go or if you go nowhere at all) and take a much needed break. I truly believe that it creates a healthier workplace. Everyone here seems very productive and always rested. Oh well, I will quit dreaming now. J

The past few weeks, I have been helping to get files prepared so that some books may be converted into e-book formats. I have been editing the copyright pages so that print information is omitted and that the ISBN numbers are changed for the new e-book format. Then I am switching the old copyright page for the new copyright page and sending on the revised file to someone who will convert the PDFs into e-books. I'm sure I will be working more on this in the weeks to come. I may also be helping with text edits once most of my co-workers are gone for the holidays. I don't normally get to work in the actual files so it has been interesting getting to be on the other side of things.

As I mentioned before, I've been traveling a lot and soon it is coming to an end. I'm looking forward to my last few weeks in Stockholm and I still have a checklist of things I want to see and do before I leave. Unfortunately, I'll never be able to see it all, but I know that I will definitely be back some day.

Slide show: Enjoying Quiet July in Stockholm