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!

easter in latvia

Last Easter I was in Vietnam, which doesn't celebrate it, and so I had a bit of a short long weekend. This year however it's an entirely different proposition. Sweden celebrates Easter with eggs, bunnies and witches and the usual 4-day weekend. (This isn't quite as good as Norway which has a 5-day weekend, but never mind, four days is enough).

After chatting to a friend from work, Feodor, I was invited to go to Rīga, Latvia, with him and a few others. This is very Australian thing to do I think: hit Europe and waste no time in trying to see as much as possible.

A few minutes later I was on airBaltic's site I found what I was looking for: a 5kr flight direct to Rīga. Five krona is around $1, can't do much better than that! We stayed in the "Metropole" hotel, famous in Rīga for being the only hotel that stayed open through-out Soviet and Nazi occupations of Latvia. In fact these occupations of Latvia have not been as disastrous on the local infrastructure as has occurred elsewhere.

Rīga comprises of "Old Rīga" which is pre-1900's and "New Rīga" which is 1900's onwards. Old Rīga is world heritage listed as it has well preserved examples of buildings from the 12th to the 19th century.

After the advent of gun-powder, city walls went out of fashion. In Rīga they turned land freed up by this into a series of canals and parkland. So the old town is now surrounded by wide cobble stoned boulevards with trams rolling along them, parkland and canals. It really was a picturesque town.

Over the canal, and past the freedom monument, is New Rīga, which has it's own architectural delights. In the early 1900's there was an art moment called Art Nouveau, or really when you are talking about the German inspired version it's called Jugendstil. It incorporates lots of long flowing lines, flower-like designs, and in Rīga there are faces incorporated into the designs. An example of this architecture in Melbourne is the City Baths.

The weather went crazy over the weekend too, and put on a real show for us. It snowed like it was the middle of winter.

The snow only served to enhance the city's beauty further. Did it matter that I don't have any clothes suitable for snow? Not really - when the worst of the came we could always pop inside for a beer.

Being a Baltic state, Latvia has a reputation for cheap alcohol. Although it's far cheaper than Sweden (2 pots cost me $20 in Sweden last night!), it isn't any cheaper than Australia. One Latvian lats is equal to $2.5 - not very favourable for the Australian tourist. Not that it deterred us. Some good nights out were had :-)