About Västerås

Västerås - the cucumber city

Västerås has almost anything you may need: a lake (Mälaren), a river (Svartån), a University, a hockey team, a cathedral, a castle, a special kind of salty cucumbers, Christmas in the winter, and a real capitol only 100 kilometres to the east.

Svartån, the creek, means “Black River” but is usually more brownish in colour. On New Years Eve 2000, the city had the good taste of pouring fluorescent paint in it. Unfortunately, the ice on the river took away the effect :-(
 

There are 340 kilometres of bicycle roads, and Västerås is often called the most bicycle friendly town in Sweden. In fact, the monument on the main square shows all industrial workers going to their work.

See more pictures representative for the beautiful parts of Västerås on http://www.stahl.nu/239-1552/september29.htm. Read more about the castle at http://www.lnctv.com/~a20080a/vasteras.html.

More info about the city (even some in English :-) can be found at: http://www.vasteras.se/english.html and for tourists on: http://turism.vastmanland.se/ and http://www.westmannaturism.se/. These pages are in Swedish. Strange enough, we do not expect international tourists.

Mälardalen University has 15,000 students, half of them in Västerås and the other half in our neighbour city Eskilstuna – and a few in Zagreb :-) See http://www.mdh.se/

We have our own airport, in case you want to fly here. It says “Stockholm-Västerås” but lies in fact 100 kilometres from Stockholm and only 2-3 kilometres outside Västerås. Maybe they hope to attract more passengers? The low-fare airline Ryanair flies here from anywhere in Europe for a euro if you book well in advance. See http://www.vasterasflygplats.se/english.asp

History

The first parliaments (riksdag) in Sweden was held here by Gustav Vasa, see e.g. http://mysjkin.troll.pp.se/svenskakungar/enggustavvasa2.htm. There are also many remains from the Vikings, most notably Anundshög, see http://www.werbeka.com/vasteras/anunde.htm.

  
Sports

There are recreation areas where you can go cross-country running or skiing (during good winters): Rocklunda and Björnön (which means "Bear Island", but fear not, there are more deer than bear). In Rocklunda, there is a crowd of sports arenas.

The World Championship in Orienteering just took place in Västerås. See http://www.woc2004.com/en/ In case orienteering is not familiar to Croatians, it is a sport where you run around in the woods with a map and tries to find your way back. It is a useful sport to practice since Sweden is mostly covered with forests.

If you are content with watching sports, we have a hockey team, VIK, which had to leave the highest series a few years ago since they spent too much money :-( See http://www.vik.se/ (in Swedish).

We have a bandy team, VSK Bandy (see http://www.vskbandy.nu/ - once again in Swedish only). They usually win the highest series – and I am only slightly biased. It is played on ice, the field is the size of a soccer field, the goal is the size of a soccer goal, and you play with a small, hard, orange ball and curved sticks like land hockey. A good, hard game. See http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/2049/English/Bandyhistory.html

The soccer team is VSK which has no less than two home pages: http://www.vskfotboll.nu/ and http://www.vsk.nu/ (also in Swedish, I guess our sports clubs do not expect international fans). From our lunch room at the University, we can watch soccer games without paying tickets – you see, there are many reasons for studying here :-)

The best is saved until last: the city is extremely proud of its own Olympic gold medal winner in Athens: Markus Oscarsson, in K2 1000m. See http://sports.yahoo.com/oly/swe/Markus+Oscarsson/9000611/.

For Computer Nerds Only

The city prioritizes Internet access for all institutions and households and provides a high-speed network. Every student apartment has broadband. Maybe this will make some of you Croatian students consider moving here. 

Finding Job in Västerås

The industrial company ASEA started in Västerås a hundred years ago, and has been a major employer since then. Have not heard of ASEA? Twenty years ago the company merged with Swiss Brown Boveri and is now known under the name of ABB. See http://www.abb.com. Several former ABB companies in Västerås now goes under the names Westinghouse, Bombardier, and Alstom.

Irresponsible author: Rikard Land