Volvo is Goteborg, and Goteborg is Volvo!

Waking up this morning was fairly difficult.  I had set my alarm to wake me up around 8am, but I ended up waking up around 8:40am.  I believe this was because of how quiet the city really is. I am so used to Milwaukee where there is always some sort of noise, but not in Goteborg.  Plenty of time to get a shower in and head over to the main building for breakfast though.  I was surprised that there was not a lot to eat for breakfast.  I only had a piece of toast with jelly and about three cups of orange juice.  I think that I will try the cereal tomorrow.  J.J. really wants me to get a hard boiled egg and put some caviar on it.  Caviar is just that one thing that I am not sure that I can really eat.  I keep thinking about Finding Nemo and how I would be eating his family from the movie. While eating breakfast it was obvious on how much the Swedish enjoy reading their newspaper.  Every person except us was reading the newspaper and those newspapers are not small. 

Katrina and I went back to the room to finish getting ready.  Still needed to do our make up for the day.  It was only 10am when we finished and neither of us wanted to stay coped up in the room until we had to go on our tour at 11am.  So we decided to do some site seeing.  About a block or two away from the hostel there is this giant hill which was surprisingly hard to walk up.  I can now tell why the Swedish are in such good shape.  While walking over to the hill there was this door that we both thought was so cute, because it was literally as tall as I am and I am the shortest one on the trip.    While walking up the hill I finally was able to find out why the cars driving by sounded so funny.  Most of the vehicles here have on snow tires, but majority of them have the snow tires with these type of nails in them.  I found out on our tour that it is actually a law to have those design tires on the vehicles from December 1st to April 1st.  If there were to be a vehicle that did not have these tires on and an accident were to occur the insurance would not cover anything. 

Meeting Gunilla was amazing!  Gunilla was our tour guide and she knew all the stories of Goteborg.  Not only is she a tour guide but she is also a teacher.  She teaches the Swedish language to many business people.  Gunilla is also amazing in the way that she speaks many languages consisting of English, Swedish, Spanish, German, and many more.  It was tough saying goodbye to her.  After only spending around three hours with her we all felt that we were saying goodbye to an aunt.  We all took a selfie with her and had a group hug.  It sure seemed that she was going to miss us as much as we were going to miss her. 

The first stop on the tour was Masthuggskyrkan Church.  This church was built in 1914 and is nearly 65 meters above sea level.  The view from the church is absolutely breathtaking.  I know people say that all the time, but in reality one could definitely hear our breathes being taken away when we walked outside the bus.  There was so much to look at.  There is the main bridge to the Hisingen Island that is the exact replica of the Golden Gate Bridge and the statue of the Sailor's Wife.  These are only a couple of sites, but they stuck out to me the most.  The statue was beautiful and the story behind it was just as beautiful.  The story is about how she was waiting for her husband to come back to Goteborg.  Her husband was a sailor who was out to sea.  Unfortunately, he did not come back and as Gunilla said, "She is still waiting."

Gunilla joked around about how she had already booked this church for her wedding, but she was missing one thing for the wedding.  She was missing Mr. Right!  Yet, we were all invited to the wedding.

While on the tour Gunilla told us a lot about the different things that the city is doing to improve.  The city is working a lot on bicycle lanes for the the bicyclists.  Sweden tries to be very environmentally friendly.  Not only do they have the bicycle lanes but they also have plenty of electric trams.  We also learned how to say street in Swedish, which is gota.  Traveling down the gota's we noticed many shops and cafe's, it was amazing.  Apparently, Sweden is #2 in the world for drinking coffee.  Gunilla drinks around five cups of coffee a day and our tour bus driver drinks eight cups of coffee a day.  The #1 country is Finland, but as Gunilla says, "She is doing her best to make Sweden #1!"  Sweden is #1 in the world for eating candy.  Swedes eat 10 kilos of candy per year.   Which converts to nearly 22 lbs.  One can easily assume that means that Swedes are on the hefty side, but yet they are all of normal size.  Gunilla says that she does not know a single person who does not work out.  Swedes live a very active life.  Since they do live such an active life they live off of a calender.  They go by calenders so much that once April 1st comes they are sitting outside drinking their coffee no matter what the weather is.  Some restaurants even have blankets to hand out to the customers.

Our second stop on the tour was the Fish Church.  The church was built in the 19th century.  The surprising thing is that the building had never been a church.  It has always been a fish market.  It is referred to as a church because it looks so much like a church.  It is absolutely beautiful!! The smell is not as bad as I thought it was going to be.  In all reality, the only fish I could smell is salmon, but I am bias since salmon is my favorite fish.  Even with the smell of the fish there are people who demand to be married in the Fish Church.  Gunilla says it is because Swedes will do anything to make the headline of the newspaper.

Next to the Fish Church there is a section of the City Wall.  The city wall was used for 200 years to keep out the Danish.  The kind of that time did not approve of the Danish and they were at war with each other for many years.  The wall would reach seven meters tall in some areas and nine meters in other areas.  The wall was built in 1621.  It was only taken down after the war was over and when the city of Goteborg was in desperate need of expansion.  Along with the history side of the city there is a building that is now apart of the University of Goteborg that was once a hospital back in the 1800's.  The building is still the same and has never changed.  The only slight change that they did to the building was add on another part that is all glass.  Also there is a yellow building that almost looks like as if it is unoccupied.  The building is actually a first class hotel which was once a post office back in 1925.  Goteborg also has the largest hotel in Europe.  Gothia Towers consists of three buildings, which on was just opened this year, and has at least 29 floors. Goteborg also has the largest indoor arena, Scandinavium.  Goteborg has a lot to be proud of and the Swedes know it.

For the entire month of August the Swedes have a Crayfish Festival.  The festival gets pretty crazy with funny hats, beer, singing, etc.  I would compare it to Mardi Gras.  Some songs they do not even know what it means, but they sing it loud and proud.  Four weeks is a long time to be celebrating crayfish.  Swedes are just very proud of their culture and take every opportunity to express that. 

Goteborg is definitely known for shopping.  The Nordstan is the largest shopping mall in Europe and consists of around 200 different departments stores, bars, and restaurants.  There are a total of six different entrances to Nordstan.  In Goteborg there is also King Street which is the longest pedestrian street in Goteborg and is lined with many shops.

Enough with the shopping details.  Filmstaden is a movie theater that is actually half under ground.  Found that out when we all mentioned how small it looked from the street.  We all became curious if the movies were all in Swedish.  To our surprise all movies that play here are in the original language, where that is English, Swedish, French, etc.  There is also the Universeum which is a museum.  Here there is a rainforest we can walk through and a dinosaur exhibition.

Our almost last stop was at the end of the Avenue.  There is a huge statue of of Poseidon.  This statue is right in front of the art museum.  The Swedes have this statue as a symbol of the city since Poseidon is the God of Sea.  It only makes sense since Goteborg is right on the ocean and is very popular for their fresh fish.  As well as Poseidon there is a statue of Victor Hasselblad who created the first camera. It is interesting to find out that on the plague for the statue there is a saying, "I am the camera."  Victor started saying this because everyone always asked him if he was the actual Hasselblad with the camera.  Also along with the statue is a foot print right at Victor's feet.  The foot print is to represent the moon since it was his cameras that went to the moon and took the pictures of the first man on the moon.  A fun fact is that those cameras are still on the moon.  They took the film out and just left the cameras.  I am not sure why, but it is still interesting to know that we left something so important and life changing on the moon.

Passing by one of the canals to the city we saw one of these amazing ships.  It was so pretty and big that we were told that it is too tall to actual leave the canal, it will not make it under the bridges that were built.  The ship was initially used for teaching sailors.  Today, the ship is actually a hotel, restaurant, and bar.  This ship is located next to the Opera House, The Goteborg Opera.  Many of us were talking about seeing if we could sit down and have a meal on the ship.  Not sure if we can, I am pretty sure that it is only for the guests of the hotel.

We stopped at this little almost like a water fountain area.  Here we saw a map of what Goteborg use to look like.  The map was not colorful or even that detailed.  The red stone pieces represented the canals and the white concrete pieces represented buildings.  Gunilla had us try and figure out where exactly we were on the map.  We surprisingly were not far off, had to take about two steps to the left.  Before we got back on the bus we headed to this little closed in corner about two blocks away from the map.  Here we discovered this amazing little candy shop for the best chocolate around.  There was also the famous licorice here.  Some of us were brave enough to try the Screaming Witch licorice

and J.J. was able to snap a couple photos of what our faces looked like when we ate it.  The Swedes really do like their salt.  I swear it felt like it was burning my tongue.  In this little closed in area was also the oldest building in Goteborg.  This building held a lot of ammunition and guns during the wars.  I do not know what the building is now, but I do know that it is not open to the public.

We all thought that the tour was over at this point.  We were very wrong.  The tour bus dropped us off right in Haga.  Haga is the oldest neighborhood in Goteborg.  It was also the very first suburb of Goteborg.  In Haga there is this cute little cafe called Cafe Hausen.  What we discovered here is the largest cinnamon bun.  One cinnamon bun can feed four to eight people.  It was absolutely huge!  We all enjoyed eating it though.  Haga was a beautiful little neighborhood and I cannot wait to go back and explore that neighborhood more.

Now that the tour was over we headed back to the hostel.  On our way Gunilla told us about Jante Law.  Jante Law is a law that Sweden put into place to protect the Swedes.  They view it as the way they are as people and as a community.  Jante Law is basically saying that no individual success is better than the success of a team.  We all know how judgmental we humans are.  Gunilla used the example of a new car.  If someone were to get a new car, their neighbors would be trying to figure out why they got a new car.  Did they get a raise?  Did they change careers?  So many questions that can really start to tear people apart.  Obviously, that type of situation has no outs.  In other ways there is the story of the most famous pop star in Sweden.  He does not have someone else pick up his groceries and does not go shopping with body guards.  He does not flaunt his success to those that do not have that.  It almost seems that this law is just a form of respect to others.  Hakan Hellstrom holds the record of 69,000 people at one concert at Ullevi.  Ullevi is the outdoor arena here in Goteborg.

After saying our goodbyes to Gunilla and the tour bus driver we all kind of split off.  Some went to work on the blogs and others went more exploring.  Katrina and I started working on the blogs since as we can all tell there is a lot to remember.  forgetting details is something that I do not want to do.  This trip has been amazing so far and I want to remember everything.  Typing up everything from each day is a great idea.

Katrina, Sam, and I decided that we still wanted to see more.  This afternoon was a free time to see attractions.  The first thing that we all thought of was the Natural History Museum.  The museum is only a couple blocks away so we knew that we were going to have enough time to work on our blogs and still be able to make it to the museum before it closed.  The museum had many interesting animals and fish and other creatures.  It was very interesting to see how the animals differ from the states to Sweden.  In this museum is a huge whale.  A giant blue whale washed up the shores during the 1800's.  They took the whale and used it in the museum as an attraction.  Gunilla talked about how the whale was stuffed and it sure is not stuffed.  The whale seems to have been torn apart and then had sheets of
metal attacked to the skin so help hold up the structure of the whale.  The mouth of the whale is wide open and we can see the entire inside.  Not only is there the blue whale, but also an African Elephant.  It still is not clear why there is an African Elephant in a Sweden museum.  Of course there were plenty of other creatures to look at, but let's be real those two were the best!  

By the time that we were done looking around the museum we were all starving.  We got half the group together and went looking for a place to have some dinner.  Due to the fact that we are in Sweden we did not want to stop at a restaurant that we knew.  We wanted to see the more Swedish side to the food.  Karlson's Garage was out first stop.  Some were unsure of the menu and decided to keep walking.  Then we stopped at Hello Monkey.  Hello Monkey was a little on the expensive side, but they did have a sharing menu so we could pair up in twos to eat and split the bill.  Once again, people were unsure of this restaurant.  Lastly, we stopped at The Temple.  When we went inside The Temple said that they did not have a table big enough for eight people.  We told them that we could split up into two groups of four, but they then said that they were completely booked up and could not fit us in for over an hour.  Completely confused, we walked back to the other two places which now had a line of customers waiting to get in.  So out of three choices none of them worked out.  Still starving we took a turn further done the street we originally came off of.  A block or two down the road we found Corner Kitchen.  They had plenty of tables and they were reasonably priced.  We did have to wait for a few minutes for the tables to be cleaned off.  While we waited we talked to this guy that was waiting at the bar.  He was really cool to talk with.  He let us know that this restaurant had a new menu and told us about a few dishes he recommended.  We also asked him about his favorite attraction.  As I believe a true Swede would answer, he could not pick just one.  He started listing many that were all great.

Some of the dishes on the menu were completely in Swedish and we could not translate anything.  Some of it we ended up asking the waitress what it was and what it all came from.  Three of us got the steak that was all on a stick with garlic bread.  Two of us got the chicken parmesan.  Another got the pork chops, another got muscles, and the last one got steak and lobster.  I was not expecting the garlic bread to look the way it did.  Garlic bread back home is thick.  Garlic bread here looks like a tortilla.  I can admit that I do like this style garlic bread way better!

There was no way that we were going to go back to the hostel without getting some dessert.  We stopped at 4-Gott and filled up.  Everything looked and smelled so good I definitely spent more than I should have.  Some of it is amazing and some of it I just could not eat another one.  I did put my foot down and at least finish the piece that I initially tried.  The rest is most likely going to go to someone that I know will eat it. There was even a giant Swedish Fish.  First thought in my mind was, "OMG!" The second thought in my mind was that my mother would love this. 

Daily Reflections:

• Coffee is major in Goteborg.
• The city really is not as big as it seems.
• The trams are confusing.
• They play American music in the restaurants and bars.
• The Swedes are very proud of their history.