Göteborg

The same boat we took to Gothenburg

This past weekend I made my first trek out of Denmark since arriving in Europe. I traveled to Sweden to the city of Gothenburg or Göteborg in Swedish. The city is located on the west coast of Sweden and is the second largest after Stockholm with around 500,000 residents. Instead of flying we took the ferry because it was cheaper, perhaps in some ways faster, and definitely easier. I traveled to Sweden with two friends from my collegium, Vincent and Mathieu. On friday we took the train from Aalborg to Fredrickshavn about a one hour ride then hopped on the ferry for the 3:25 minute ride to Sweden. Interestingly upon arrival customs was barely existent with the exception of a walking past a drug smelling dog. The ferry ride was nice and we left rain in Denmark for a setting sun in Sweden. After we found our way to the hostel with some difficulty navigating the tram we met up with some of Vincent's friends from his University in Brest who were currently studying in Gothenburg. We ordered some pizza and hung out with them at their collegium.

The trams (Trolleys) that dominated the streets of the city

On Saturday we wanted to get and early start. Luckily there was a grocery store literally right below the room we were staying in and I scored some fresh croissants for breakfast. By 10:30 we were down town walking the main street conveniently called Avenyn (pronounced Avenue). We walked all around the small island that made up the city center. Like the cities in Denmark it was filled with shops and had what was more or less a mall with outdoor corridors. In addition it had some very beautiful buildings.  The little island that this was a part of also looked like a star fort like Christianshavn in Copenhagen which makes sense because the city is young by European standards at only a few hundred years old. As a result there was a lot of more modern housing in the form of apartment buildings and many of the older stone buildings were of the Victorian and mostly Colonial styles. Nevertheless there was some spectacular architecture as some of the photos I put on facebook showed.

An old hotel/manor turned restaurant/bar on Avenyn

We say the national museum but unfortunately did not have time to go in with only two days to explore the city. We also say the ship yard which had a variety of sailing ships, military ships, and fishing boats. After lunch we traveled across the city to see the Slotsskogen park. The park was really nice and large and featured a zoo with both small and large animals amongst other things. The large animals conveniently live year round in the zoo so we got to check a lot of them out including moose a favorite animal in Sweden and goats.

I know he is a little blurry but this seal really was photogenic

After the zoo we headed back to our hostel where we made tacos for dinner before meeting up with Vincent's friends again. On sunday after checking out of the Hostel and grabbing some more croissants, chocolate ones this time we decided to explore a new part of the city. Unfortunately it was sunday and it was misting out so we were not able to feel the full effect of the section called Haga. Haga is the older part of the city with the more traditional houses and would normal have streets lined with vendors and cafes. Unfortunately that was not the case but it was still nice to explore it. It reminded me of Nyhavn in Copenhagen but less vibrantly colored. After Haga we traveled around the city looking for the large churches we spotted from the ferry on the ride in that we wanted to see up close. One of them was a beautiful gothic church that's copper roof had oxidized to green giving it a interesting contrast to the red brick walls.

Gothic church

Inside was beautiful stained glass windows but they were doing some construction so the pictures could not be perfect. After that we went to the small fort/tower on the hill overlooking the city. Apparently when the city was built it was the master stronghold that could protect the city from invaders. After lunch we did a very french thing and met up with Vincent's friends one last time and went to a cafe which was surprisingly enough french. There were an abundance of pastries there and the ones I tried were very good. After having some coffee it was time to return to Denmark so we took the ferry back. The last part of the adventure was back in Denmark. We quickly unloaded from the ferry and walked to the train station. However we were not quick enough and missed the train by only a few minutes. So we realized our fate of having to wait an hour for the next train. However after no more than 10 minutes of waiting we realized that there was a bus station next door. So we decided to check it out only to find one bus remaining that luckily was going to Aalborg. It cost the same as the train and took about as long so that was nice. Also as soon as we entered the bus it left for Aalborg so we diffinately caught a lucky break which allowed us to make it home before 10 pm on sunday.