exploring göteborg

Over the last two weekends I've had some time to explore Göteborg. The weather has been warming up... and it was even sunny last weekend!

The town is putting on its summer face. Restaurants are adding outdoor dining tables, people are picnicking by the canals, and the tourist boat tours are starting up.

Slottsskogen (translation: Castle Forest) is a large park and recreation area in Göteborg. It was developed as a English garden, but these days there are soccer pitches, a "zoo" with Swedish animals, and areas for frisbee golf. I haven't played frisbee golf yet, but it looks hilarious; rest assured there'll be a blog post on that when I do end up playing it.

Two weekends ago on a slightly cold overcast Saturday, a colleague of mine, Deepika, and myself went exploring around Slottsskogen. It's quite nice. We found an aviary in the middle of the park. It had all sorts of birds including rainbow Rainbow Lorikeets from Australia! But that wasn't the most interesting thing about this aviary. This aviary included aquatic bird life: penguins! Didn't expect that.

The next weekend was wandering weather. I like to wander aimless in a new city if I have the time. It's a great way to understand the dynamic of the city. What are the flashy expensive suburbs? Where are the grimy blue collar towns? Where is the university? There's sure to be some student pubs around the university - always good to find that :-)

I decided to follow one of the canals through town, and see where it lead me.

It lead past the construction site of a new football stadium. Past their main football stadium. Past a highway leading to Oslo, or Stockholm, or Copenhagen. And then I decided to follow a road up a hill instead of the canal, loosely heading towards a fortress in the distance. On my way up the hill there was a church with a statue of Mermen (that's right: men, not maids) out the front, throwing rocks at each other. The juxtaposition of Greek mythology and Christian architecture was quite bizarre.

April is when the tourist boats start doing tours of Göteborg's canals and harbour. This really illustrates how the historic 17th century centre of the city fits in with the industrial ship-building harbour. These days the ship-building is gone, but repairs are still done here.

Sunday was equally as sunny, and so Deepika and I headed to one of the islands in the mouth of Göta Älv, Göteborg's river. There's heaps of islands in the mouth of the river, and most of them have names ending in "ö". We caught the ferry to Brännö. This car-free island is home to around 800 people. Instead of cars they have funny looking three-wheeled motorcycles. The architecture is very Swedish, and some of the houses were very old and small.

We decided to hike out to the edge of Brännö where it is connected to another island, Galterö, by a small sand bank. Galterö seemed to be uninhabited except for the odd hiker, or family on an outing.

I'll be very happy if the weather stays this good! This weekend I'm off to Amsterdam / Den Haag / Rotterdam, and it's supposed to be warm and sunny. Make sure you visit my photo album, as there's heaps more photos there!