Next on my agenda after Lund was Gothenburg, Sweden’s “second city.” Unsurprisingly I knew, and still know, almost nothing about it; like every Stockholmare, for me Sweden is Stockholm, fuck everyone else. I mean, not really fuck everyone else, but it’s uncomfortable to admit that I have become the Swedish equivalent of the asshole New Yorker. I have brought shame and dishonor upon my house.
I didn’t do much upon my arrival because I was exhausted from too much wine and too little sleep (and too short a train ride to make up for the sleep). I stumbled in to my hotel room at around noon and napped forever. Getting sloshed on Zoom while watching a Neil Breen movie was still 100% worth it and I ended my day with no regrets.
This hotel wasn’t half as charming as my place in Lund. It was generic hotel in all its presentation and decor (as opposed to the cute, non-hotel-ish railroad theme of The More Hotel in Lund), but it was also butt ugly. I booked a room expecting something like this:
With flashbacks to my gorgeous hotel room in Dublin last year:
But got this (note! this was after my nap, the place didn’t come prerumpled):
Not to mention the weather was bleh and, once I woke up from my nap and worked up the energy to go outside, everything was closed. At just 8 pm on a Sunday! What! I ended up stopping at an Espresso House despite my undying hatred for them just to grab something like dinner, plus a smoothie to go for the rest of my boxed wine, which I of course schlepped with me. It’s in a box, after all.
That’s all of my notes for the day: “Why is everything closed??”
I spent a couple hours writing up my thoughts on Lund, and then zonked out.
After a shower and a hotel breakfast, I made for the cathedral, Domkyrkan Göteborg. The one in Lund was fresh in my mind and so I thought, might as well take in a bit of history and culture before I do anything else too crazy in town.
The website was quite dodgy about whether or not there were tours, however. I found an old Swedish travel blog write-up about taking a tour but it was several years out of date, plus coronatider mina bekanta, so I just meandered around after the Monday afternoon service was over to see what I could see, without any more guidance or context than the occasional plaque.
The cathedral is pretty new as far as these things go, dating back only to the 1800s (there were two previous, older cathedrals on the site that burned down, oops), and so lacked those good good historical vibes I like in the churches here.
It was also pretty ugly, in my view, and something about it left the distinct impression of the US and the Antebellum South. I didn’t stay too long, and spent most of my time looking at the small display of goods from the charitable artist’s school and collective the church sponsors in Kenya rather than the tacky architecture.
Yet I’d had such high hopes after this straight up Lovecraftian nightmare statue right outside the church grounds!
I hopped a tram a few stops out to visit the Botanical Gardens, because I guess the two things I will instantly gravitate towards in a city are churches and gardens. I suppose history and flowers are as good a place to start as any when you’re in a new town!
I won’t bore you with ALL OF THE FLOWERS. Let this photo be a stand-in; you can imagine your own flowers.
On the ride out I noticed a place called Aniara Bokhandeln, and if there’s anything that’s going to get my attention it’s going to be an indie bookstore named after the great modernist Swedish poem of the 20th century. I made a mental note to check it out another day.
There was a food truck by the entrance to the gardens and it was still parked there when I had done a full circuit around the most interesting parts, and thus began my culinary theme for the trip: langos.
I don’t know if there’s a particularly large population of Hungarians in Gothenbug. My Hungarian friend said nothing to that effect when I pinged him with the above photos of my food (though he was horrified at what he considered awful mash-up Frankenfood), but all of a sudden I landed in town and there they were, everywhere. At any rate, fried dough with just about anything can’t go wrong. I approve.
The whole day, I’d been in intermittent contact with a coworker who used to live in Gothenburg and had just been back to visit during his recent vacation. I kvetched about everything being closed, to which he replied: “just make it to 2:a långgatan and it’s all good!”
That inside tip turned out to be the thing that made Gothenburg worthwhile for me. Not that the botanical gardens or the other things I did weren’t nice—they were!—but it’s helpful to know where people go to relax and have fun. Even if it’s coronatider, mina bekanta.
I wandered around and eventually found Cafe Publik, another Vänster Partiet watering hole (or so it seemed, based on the lefty stickers and its proximity to the party headquarters) and one of those odd ducks that has a full license to serve alcohol but also serves coffee and tea.
It was a much better lefty cafe experience than India Däck, where I felt just very, very old. If this was the party watering hole, it hadn’t become so insular that literally no one else ever turned up. I would have holed up there the entire evening with my book (Une morte très douce) except that my phone battery was quickly eating it from an unusually high level of Google Maps usage, and I didn’t want to be caught out with a dead phone.
Back at the hotel, I put my phone to charge, made plans for tomorrow (it suddenly struck me that Karin Boye’s memorial wasn’t far from here) and continued reading The Fifth Season in the hotel lobby, again with a fireplace. I thought about going out to get something for dinner, since it was early yet, but satisfied myself with some of the muesli I had brought with me from Lund and a chocolate bar.
Adulting!
