Another day of exploring is almost complete! Today we had the chance to go on a 3 hour bus tour of the city and got to learn a lot about Gothenburg. The tour guide even taught us some Swedish! It was a very rainy day with no sun, but we are looking forward to hopefully getting some sun tomorrow when we go to the islands! This afternoon we were set free and able to go explore the city!
During out bus tour we learned a lot of interesting facts about Gothenburg and Sweden itself. Surprisingly enough, Swedish is #2 in the world for coffee consumption, only behind Finland. According to our tour guide, the U.S. has nothing on them for drinking coffee, tell that to my Starbucks addiction please! Gothenburg is the 2nd largest city in Sweden and is known as a green city, with more than half of the surface being covered in greenery. We learned that most of the outdoor cafes open in April, warm or cold weather, but the locations give you blankets to keep you warm! We also learned that Sweden used to be a closed city until around the beginning of the 19th century because of their greatest enemy Denmark-Norway. The wall was 7 meters high and had only 3 gates to get into the city. We then went to the Fish Church, or the fish market. If you know me, you know that Kendall had to tell me to “wipe my face” because I had a funny look on my face when we walked in.
We then drove around until we got to a big collection of buildings, including museums, theaters, and statues. The first statue we saw that was very cool was the Hasselblad statue with the moon footprint. It is believed by Swedes that there are 6-8 Hasselblad cameras on the moon, a prestige brand of cameras in Sweden. The second statue is right on Avenue, the biggest commercial street in Gothenburg. The avenue was built after the wall came down in the 19th century as a place for people to go hang out. The statue is of Poseidon, the sea god. We also visited the German Church, which was a small and very beautiful church. Similar to many of the other buildings in Gothenburg the church had a lot of fires in its history, but the only part of the church that has made it through all of the fires has been the part behind the alter where the General’s memorial and casket is. Our tour guide also informed us that under the floor we were walking on was a secret room that had over 100 burials (creepy!).
One of our last stops on the tour was to the perfect picture taking area. Here we were able to see the entire city of Gothenburg and get some great photos. Unfortunately, the church that we went to visit was locked, so we had to resort to only taking pictures.
After the bus tour, we were able to go roam the city in smaller groups and navigate ourselves around the area. I got my first coffee, which is much stronger than the coffee in the US. We walked around Haga, a popular area that has a lot of smaller shops and cafes up and down the streets. A few of us stopped at a pub up the street from our hostal, Doktor Glas, for a peach cider (which was amazing). We are now back at our hostal uploading pictures and our blogs! Tonight we are looking forward to going out to dinner as smaller groups and then heading out to downtown for some more exploring!
Tomorrow is supposed to be a sunny day and we are hitting up the islands! Of course, its green and yellow Sunday so I will be sporting a Packers shirt around Gothenburg, Sweden. Hopefully I won’t get as many dirty looks as I do when I wear it in Illinois!
3 Things I Learned:
- The sun never comes out here during the winter. During the summer it is out for majority of the day, but we have yet to see the sun.
- Swedes love their coffee even more than Americans do. Even better, the coffee is MUCH stronger.
- If it snows in Sweden it often doesn’t last long. Sometimes hours, sometimes a couple days.
- People are all very welcoming to Americans (so far).
Talk to you all tomorrow!
Lyndsey
Lyndsey Learns Swedish 