When we arrived in Gothenburg, our couchsurfing host met us at the track to take us to his place. He was a little antsy because he was worried about being late to work. He helped us get some three-day tram/bus passes because his place was a few stops down and we didn’t want to walk it. Of course, all the steps and hills we had to climb to get to his place undermined the effort saved by riding the tram. He left us a key to his place and went to work and we ventured out to see Gothenburg.
From the Central Station stop, we wandered around looking at some of the big squares with statues dedicated to past kings and the amazing buildings surrounding them. I had read that Gothenburg was a very cosmopolitan city and so far it wasn’t disappointing at all. Alongside the street from the station was a small river that ran through the middle of town. We followed it down a little ways and then made for Kungsportsavenyen, one of the main streets in town. It was lined with big shops, a huge theater, a couple of parks and lots of places to eat. After looking around a bit, we turned west and headed to the old town called Haga. Along the way, we passed a lot of university buildings and the street we were on had a huge tree lined walkway in the middle of the road with bike and pedestrian lanes. The trickiest part of getting around Gothenburg is learning how to cross the street since you have to cross the tram tracks and street, many times without a crosswalk.
We were told to go there and try the large cinnamon buns that they sell. As we got closer to Haga, the rain started again so we looked a little more hastily than usual for a café to sit and stay dry. We ordered one of the huge buns and a coffee to wash it down and it was good although a little too sweet. They don’t top their buns with the icing coating we enjoy so much back home but little granules of sugar. Since the rain wasn’t stopping, Izzy checked out a couple of the shops next to the café while I sat and waited.
Eventually it stopped and we continued our trek through Haga until we saw a large hill that demanded to be climbed. It’s called Skansparken and at the top is a round building aptly named Skansen Kronan. It’s a small fortification put on top of the hill to protect the city and it offers a great view of the city. According to the plaque out front, it was never engaged in battle but it did serve the city well as a fortress. We descended on the western side and walked to a church we saw in the distance that looked like a smaller version of the red brick ones we saw in Stockholm and Uppsala. The decoration inside was bit simpler than the other ones but it was still nice and had a free bathroom to use. This is one problem we encountered quite often was that most bathrooms required a small payment. Even trying to sneak into McDonald’s doesn’t work but instead of paying, we just caught the door before it closed so we didn’t have to pay. I know we like to think we are more capitalistic than other countries but making money off of people needing to use the bathroom even after they’ve bought food in your establishment is above and beyond. We left the church because they seemed to be having an all girls choir practice and the guy in charge was having all of them shuffle their chairs around and the noise was awful.
The weather outside started to clear up so we meandered through the city back towards the Kungsportsavenyen Street so we could walk all the way to the end. There we found a nice looking cinema, opera house, and another theater. Gothenburg definitely seemed to have one of the better collections of theaters that we’d seen in Sweden. The rain soon returned and we decided we’d had enough and made for the tram to take us home. We stopped off at the store and bought some stuff to cook for dinner and spent the rest of the evening staying warm at our host’s house. When he arrived home, we stayed up for a while chatting and sharing travel stories.
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