So far I’ve been to Gothenburg twice. The earlier trip was a theater visit in February 2017 when we met a Swedish media person Alexandra Pascalidou. She is a lovely lady and a great fan of public libraries. Mareetta knows her and so I’ve met her couple of times too.
Back to Gothenburg. It’s the second largest city in Sweden and a very nice one. It feels different to Stockholm and has lovely old city and city centre.
On Friday we landed around noon and then took the airport bus to our hotel near the Central station, found our room and relaxed for a while. Then we took a walk, visited a local mini library and continued to the Mr Cake cafe and had late lunch which was very good. We had first thought only to eat a light lunch there and go to dinner later but afterwards we decided to skip dinner all together.
We walked a bit on the shore side and went back to the hotel via grocery shop and bought something to the hotel room. Had a little lie down at the hotel and then left for the Scandinavium which was packed, there was 11 000 people. The crowds were quickly inside the arena and we found our places on the floor and the concert begun right on time. The Swedes are awesome in sing-alongs so it was great to be part of that. We were back at the hotel before midnight and watched a bit of tv before turning in.
On Saturday we slept a bit later, bought day tickets to the public transport system and took a tram to Mr Cake for breakfast but they didn’t have any so we ate a lunch, I had a lovely warm beetroot salad with goat cheese and as dessert I had a red velvet croissant. With our bellies full we took a tram to a record shop Mareetta wanted to visit. We got there and noticed people gathering around the walls in the shop floor but didn’t think much of it. Mareetta went on a hunt mode and I found two unwrapped Prince dvd’s (Purple rain and Graffiti bridge, I only have PR copied from a library dvd) and bought those. The people were queuing for a signing, a Swedish musician Thåström was there to sign his newest album and the masses queued around the block when we got out of the store.
We took a tram to the city centre and went to Science Fiction bokhandeln (bookshop) which I love, I always visit it in Stockholm and here they had better collection than in Stockholm month ago so I found a lot of books but bought only three from there. Tough choices had to be done.. Afterwards we were getting pretty tired so we decided to go to the shopping mall.
There we did a cursory round around the clothes shops but then went to the grocery store again and bought things to eat at the hotel room. We wanted to watch the Swedish music programme ’So much better’ (in Finland it’s called Just life and I absolutely loath it) and not move a muscle. It was good plan and we almost peed our pants when I tried to make us coffee with the Nespresso machine, I managed it in the end luckily.
On Sunday we had breakfast at the hotel and packed our things and then bought another day ticket and took trams to different parts of the city. One tram took us to the south to Mölndal and we found a big supermarket and did some gift shopping there.We bought some sweet buns and cake from Mr Cake to take home too. On the way back to hotel we had dinner and found another bookshop where I bought one book and Mareetta bought Christmas cards.
We managed to get most of our stuff into our bags and then took a taxi to the airport where we were in really good time. We had late flight and then my electronic boarding pass didn’t load so we had to wait on the counter to get it fixed before going through the security check. Afterwards we had coffee in the mostly shut down airport and I bought a pair of Dala häst ear rings from the gift shop as on the last visit I had not bought them and regretted it since.
We were back in Helsinki around midnight and Darling Hubby was waiting for us. I was happy to be at home.
Nokisuu 