Sunday, January 18, 2015

Adventure for the Exit!

Last night I officially tried a piece of every single different type of candy that I bought.  I was shocked when I realized there were only two or three pieces that I did not like.  My favorite was the piece of chocolate that kind of looks like a log with sprinkles on it that is actually a marshmallow inside.  

Jet leg is hitting hard.  Once again, I set my alarm to go off multiple times and once again I did not wake up until Katrina woke me up.  Neither of us wanted to get up.  We both forced ourselves to go to breakfast and that was the best decision of the day.  Eating breakfast really woke me up to start my day.  Katrina, Sam, Brandt, and I all met up to do some exploring today.  The guys did not want to be moving at all this morning either.  We waited until about 11am to start doing anything.  The first thing we did was walk around town some just to see what was down different streets that we have not been down before.  When it became time we went down the a tram stop to get a ride to the Universium.  The Universium was amazing.  I did not quite like the Rainforest part because my hair frizzed and started curling like crazy.  I ended up just throwing it up in a bun so that it some what hid the frizziness and curls. 

There was definitely plenty to look at while there.  I believe we walked about half way through the entire place when we realized that we did not start at the beginning, but somewhere in the middle.  As we all laughed and turned around we followed through from the correct to starting point.  The Ocean part was pretty interesting.  I enjoyed looking at the sharks, but I was hoping that they were going to have bigger sharks in the tanks.  I did enjoy looking at the star fish.  There are so many types of star fish that I never knew about.  In all reality, I only thought a star fish could be in the form of a star, boy was I wrong!  I loved going into the Space part of the Universium.  There were so many cool games and tutorials.  They had a toilet replica from space.  If you leaned back in the seat when you sat down the toilet would make this beyond weird noise and then vibrate.  I could not handle that.  I jumped out of it right when it started making noise.  Then we saw these scales and in front of the scales were these images of planets.  As you stepped on the scale the screen would show you exactly how much you would weight on that specific planet.  Some of the planets I could figure out what they were, it was difficult with everything being in Swedish.  I was able to understand the kilograms part though!  At the end of the Space portion there was a mat on the ground in the shape of the moon.  The first thing I thought of is that I want to stand on the moon.  The moment I did I stepped right back off.  I was expecting the moon to be hard, but it was soft and squishy.  Katrina found some awesome almost like game.  There was a controller, like an XBox controller, and it controlled the images on the projector.  We were able to zoom out so far that I believe we went through three or four galaxies.  We were able to zoom in to the point that we could see the markers for major cities in the countries.

On our way back out we saw this cave.  We saw the cave when we initially went through the Rainforest, but there were so many people and kids that we did not want to go in.  This time there was no one around.  Me being the smallest decided to go inside.  The others followed and we saw images of wolves.  Realizing that the cave was to represent the living conditions of the wolves.  On the right hand side was a very small hole in the wall.  Small enough for a four year old to walk
through.  I was curious and crawled through the hole to see where it would take us.  There was a room on the other side of the wall; if we would have kept on doing straight we would have found the door way to the same room.  I wanted to feel like a kid for just a little while.  Watching the others trying to crawl through that hole was pretty interesting.  I swear they had to have gotten stuck at least twice.  We walked back through the Ocean part and found this giant mouth that little kids were climbing in.  The four of us decided to go inside the mouth and have a picture taken.  Brandt claims he was the only one to survive since he only had a leg in the mouth and the rest of us were completely engulfed in his giant mouth. 

We were just about to walk out when we all realized that we never go to see the mammoths.  The mammoths were on the very top floor and we actually had to go outside to see them.  They had blankets right outside the door for people to use when they went outside.  Something that I thought was very kind of them and something that we would never see in the States, because we do not trust people.  It is amazing how much the Swedes trust.  To get on the trams and buses there is a little computer on the bus that you take your pass to and it swipes it.  Almost like a key fob.  The tram and bus take off whether or not you actually scan your pass.  The first thing you see when you walk in is these tents that have the military logos on them.  I am not sure why that is, but inside them there are these skeletons and stories about different animals and humans during this time period of the mammoths.  There was even a preserved dead baby mammoth in one of the tents in a sealed container.  Then you walk further in and there is this giant mammoth that actually moves.  It was so cool.  We saw some dark cave to the left and decided to go in and see what was being shown inside.  One family was just starting to walk out when we walked in.  We saw a black bear in this glass in area.  Of course, the bear was not real.  I took a quick picture of it and continued to walk through.  The group of us were all next to each other when the bear all of a sudden start moving and growling and the lights turned out and almost blinded us.  Some of us might not want to admit it, but we all got freaked out and hurried out of the cave.  The family that had just exited before us were laughing so hard at us.  It was pretty great.

Every single animal in the show was mechanical and moving.  It kind of became creepy after awhile.  One part that I thought was really cool was the tp in the corner.  Sam, Brandt, and I went inside to see what it all looked like.  There were three benches that were draped with animal fur and a small electric fire.  The fur was surprisingly warm.  Now I understand how cavemen survived so long in the freezing weather.

Trying to find our way out of the Universium was a struggle.  We could not go out the way we initially came in and we did not know exactly where the exit was.  On our adventure for the exit, we found the snake area.  There was a tour going on when we walked in and right when I heard the rattle from the rattle snake I walked right back out.  We even looked at the poisons spiders and I was not dealing with that either.  Katrina and I became a little brave when searching through the Rainforest.  The guys saw this box that said to push the red button.  Well the red button was literally on the inside of the box on the other wall of the box.  Katrina and I counted to three and then tried to hit the buttons as quick as we could.  While in the process of doing that the guys jumped behind us and yelled boo!  Which scared so us much we both missed the red buttons and both hit our hands on the edge of the holes of the plexiglass.  After yelling at the boys we tried again.  This time were successful on number three and were able to press the red buttons.  Once we did the lights turned on inside the box and there were these nasty bugs.  They looked like some forms of roaches.  Not sure I am going to put my hand in another box without knowing what is inside the box.

Finally, after finding the exit we decided to walk across the street to the Gothia Towers and roam
around in there.  On the 23rd floor there is a pool that hangs over the side of the building.  So while you are swimming you can see the street directly below you.  Unfortunately, you needed a room key to get the elevators to move.  

Since we were only a group of four we thought it would be a good idea to meet up with the rest of the group.  While walking in the direction of them we all felt very hungry.  On our way it started raining and I was the only one to have an umbrella, a single person umbrella.  We quick ducked into a small restaurant and decided that we were going to eat lunch there and then go find the group afterwards.  I tried this chicken salad.  It looked really good in the glass.  I took the first bite of it and I was not impressed.  The group pretty much started scavenging off of my plate while still eating their sandwiches.  I went back up to the counter to order something else that I will hopefully like.  I ordered a pastry.  It looked like those chili bowls made of the bread with cream inside.  There was not only cream inside, but also some lemon stuff.  I was not too excited about the lemon part, but the rest was delicious.

The rain stopped and we headed back out to find the Poseidon statue.  We knew if we could find the Poseidon statue then we could find The Avenue and find the other group.  The Avenue is a street filled with shops, stores, and restaurants.  The Swedes call it The Avenue and I do not know why or what the street name really is.  Off of The Avenue is also King Street and if you walk a block or two to the left there is the mall.  We saw NK, which is Gunilla's favorite place to shop, and decided to check it out.  It was a very expensive department store.  It seemed like a step above Macy's.

Nordstan was not far away.  We all became very excited when we realized we found the mall only a block down the road from NK.  Inside the mall was huge.  There were shops everywhere and people everywhere.  We all noticed that there were dogs in the mall.  Apparently, that is allowed and surprisingly the dogs were not acting up.  The dogs did not bark at anyone and did not try to play with or jump on anyone.  The dogs are so well behaved here and so are the children.  For the short time that I have been here so far I have only seen two children act up and trust me there are a lot of children here.  Even when some would start acting up they were never loud.  I do not understand what parents do differently here then back in the States.

In the center of the mall their was a team doing pole jumping.  They were going to high I seriously
thought that they were going to go through the ceiling.  They were amazing though and some seemed to be very young and were not all that tall!  On the other side of the stair case in the middle was a dancing group.  They were all dancing around and showing off the different dances that they do so they can hopefully intrigue more people to come to their dancing classes.  Goteborg is definitely different than Milwaukee.

Out of our group only Katrina bought something.  Everything was so expensive and nothing really jumped out at me.  The guys were even talking about how expensive the stores are here.  Hopefully we find a couple of places to shop at before the end of the trip so that I can pick up some souvenirs. 

Looking at the time we knew we needed to make it back to the hostel in time for dinner.  We exited the mall and went straight to the tram map.  Sam said that we all needed to get on the number 6 tram. After about six or seven stops he realized we got on the wrong tram.  We were heading way out of the city and the hostel was the other direction.  We got off of the tram and got on another one that headed back into the city.  The stop we got off at was the one we actually got on at near the mall.  Once again we went to the map and realized that we needed to get on the number two tram.  Amazingly, we made it back to the hostel in time to even clean up a little before heading to dinner.  What we found out is that number six was right if we could have gotten on the number six on the other side of the street.  These trams are seriously confusing.

For dinner we went to this cute little restaurant that I guess used to be a house.  In Goteborg though what restaurants were not houses at some point.  J.J. asked the waiter to tell the history of the house.  The house was built in the late 1900's by the king during that time.  Also the king's castle, or mansion, was right across the street from this house.  The king owned this house for his own "personal" uses.  The appropriate name for the house was the Happy House.  I guess there were people that were trying to tear down the building and build a more modern version of it, but the government was not going to allow that.  They looked at this house as being a land mark full of history.  Full of history is right!

Dinner ended up becoming a five course meal.  First they gave us these very little plates, that I looked at them as tiles.  On them was seriously only a very small piece of beats, a very small piece of cucumber jelly, a fried piece of tomato, and some onion sauce.  I only ate the piece of beat and cucumber jelly.  I am not a fan of either.  Then we got this bowl of a fish stew they called it.  It had crayfish, shrimp, and lobster in it with some sauce, a piece of bread and muscle.  I immediately started eating the sea food.  Then found out I actually had a big piece of cod in my bowl as well as
everything else.  I was not sure what was spread on the bread, but I ate it and it was not all that bad.  Now for the muscle, that is a completely different story.  I felt like I had to try it just to say that I did and have my parents not believe me.  They know how picky of an eater I am.  I had J.J. take a picture of me before and after the muscle as proof for my parents.  Oh boy does my face look pretty!  It was so gross and I am never having it again.  I tried it and I am happy I tried it, it is just never happening again.

The next plate we ate was a steak, with potato cake, ox tail, and some carrot stuff.  I was not going to try the carrot stuff.  I knew I was not going to like it and that was just going to be.  I ate the steak and of course asked it to be medium rare.  The potato cake seemed to have more flavor than the steak.  It makes me miss the A1 sauce at home.  Once I finished the things that I knew I was going to eat I tried a piece of the ox tail.  Without even blinking J.J. pulled out his camera and prepared to take the before and after pictures of the ox tail.  It ox tail was not good, but at least this time my face was not so scrunched up.

The desserts were the best part.  We only planned on having one dessert, but the restaurant gave us a free one right after the one J.J. bought for us.  The first dessert was creme brulee.  I have never had it before and was pretty nervous trying it for the first time.  Yet, it was amazing!  I seriously thought that the entire top was sugar until I found out that they took a torch to it.  The second dessert was on a very small tile plate again.  It was a piece of chocolate with some sort of cream on the top.  The chocolate was like a fudge and was amazing and the cream was some sort of orange tasting cream that set off the chocolate.  I do not believe I have ever tasted something so great ever! 

Tomorrow we have to start visiting the businesses.  I have to navigate tomorrow as well.  Brandt gets us from the hostel to Skapa and I take us from Skapa to the Goteborg University.  I am not ready to be completely dressed professionally.  I like my jeans and nice shirt.  Still debating on what to where tomorrow.

Daily Reflections:
  • Trying new foods is scary.
  • I feel better after I have at least tried something new.
  • The social culture here is so different.
  • Jet leg is the worst thing ever.
  • I do not understand how my dad can eat muscles.

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