Gothenburg

There’s tons of history here in Gothenburg, from the Vikings to the foundation of the modern city in 1621 to the Volvo in 1926. Incidental fun (?) fact - “Volvo” derives from the Swedish for “I roll”, a reference to the ball and roller bearings that started the company off.

There’s also tons of current-day fun here too, with the Gothenburg Culture Festival taking place while we were visiting.

We were out on a morning walk when Sharon was roped in to a university activity, being forced, by some young people in rather peculiar costumes, to push a person in a shopping trolley up the street to Gotaplatsen, the city’s cultural area. Actually, she pushed it about a hundred metres, but at least she didn’t tip the jockey out like some others did. No photos, so you just have to take our word for it.

On a beautiful sunny day, we took a boat tour of the city’s canals and out into the harbour and enjoyed some beautiful views, plenty of low bridges and even more bad jokes in the commentary.

The maritime history is powerful here, with a massive museum full of vintage ships and a shipbuilding industry that only chucked in the towel about ten years ago.

We also visited the city’s museum, partly because it was free due to the Culture Festival. This was interesting, but with about a day’s worth of information when we had an hour. All the same, the remains of the Viking ship were fascinating, as was a bit of more recent history.

A fire at a disco in 1998 killed 64 people. Four people were known to be responsible, having argued with security, snuck in and, out of spite, started a fire in a stairwell full of old furniture. The city, as civilised places do, rallied as one around the bereaved, the survivors, the first responders and the carers. The stories of the aftermath of the tragedy were incredibly compelling, and, although every country has its own stories of tragedy or heroism, this one will stay with us for a long time.

So it was then back to the Culture Festival, which consisted at least partly of hundreds of young people listening to loud music and eating greasy, fried street food.

We met up with the Roffes, the paths of all our friends seeming to criss cross all over Scandinavia since we parted in Oslo.

A couple of drinks near the loud music, then a nice dinner a few blocks back, gave us our fill of culture for the night.

Next stop is our last on this trip, Stockholm.Læs mere