Thursday 27/4 to Friday 28/4: Göteborg
I too have now joined the wonderful world of blogging. Blogging is probably less annoying than clogging up people’s inboxes with group emails, and it seemed a bit pointless to create one of my own, so for the rest of our Euro-jaunt, Cindy and I will be keeping the spirit of Grimsö alive here.
The trip over wasn’t quite as hellish as I imagined it was going to be – I turned on the charm at check-in in Brisbane and managed to secure a whole row to myself between Brisbane and Singapore. The flight from Singapore to Frankfurt was totally full however and my travelling companions for those thirteen hours were a pair of Germans in surgical masks. Presumably they were worried about bird flu or SARS or something, but I’m sure my non-specific sniffling and sneezing really set their minds at ease for the long flight ahead. A couple of blurry and sleepless flights later I arrived in Göteborg. Alas, my luggage did not. The moment when the carousel stopped without my bag ever appearing was pretty horrible, but I was quickly assured that it was on the next flight over and would arrive in two hours. Given that I probably would have gone straight to the hotel and fallen asleep at 2 in the afternoon, the delay at the airport was probably a blessing in disguise. During a brief wander around the terminal I was stopped by a Swedish hipster who liked my Hefner t-shirt and spent half an hour chatting about the post-rock band he was in, leading me to conclude that Sweden is clearly the most indie-rock country in the world. [Meanwhile, Cindy dropped the name of Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman to almost every 20-something Swede she met, and received only blank stares. I guess Grimsö is a hipster-free zone.]
By the time I negotiated the bus to the city and figured out how to get to my hotel, I was really struggling to stay awake – thankfully Göteborg turned on an icy drizzle and biting wind, which shook me out of my stupor long enough to find some delicious Indian food (Channa Massala is the same in any language) and fall into bed at about 8:30 for the heaviest 12 hour sleep of my life. Friday was spent strolling around the city on the lookout for food and coffee – it’s quite a beautiful city, although the harbour, which I expected to be spectacular, was just a giant industrial port. Cindy arrived at 5ish and we found ourselves some pizza and had a nice early night in preparation for the journey to Denmark.
The trip over wasn’t quite as hellish as I imagined it was going to be – I turned on the charm at check-in in Brisbane and managed to secure a whole row to myself between Brisbane and Singapore. The flight from Singapore to Frankfurt was totally full however and my travelling companions for those thirteen hours were a pair of Germans in surgical masks. Presumably they were worried about bird flu or SARS or something, but I’m sure my non-specific sniffling and sneezing really set their minds at ease for the long flight ahead. A couple of blurry and sleepless flights later I arrived in Göteborg. Alas, my luggage did not. The moment when the carousel stopped without my bag ever appearing was pretty horrible, but I was quickly assured that it was on the next flight over and would arrive in two hours. Given that I probably would have gone straight to the hotel and fallen asleep at 2 in the afternoon, the delay at the airport was probably a blessing in disguise. During a brief wander around the terminal I was stopped by a Swedish hipster who liked my Hefner t-shirt and spent half an hour chatting about the post-rock band he was in, leading me to conclude that Sweden is clearly the most indie-rock country in the world. [Meanwhile, Cindy dropped the name of Swedish songwriter Jens Lekman to almost every 20-something Swede she met, and received only blank stares. I guess Grimsö is a hipster-free zone.]
By the time I negotiated the bus to the city and figured out how to get to my hotel, I was really struggling to stay awake – thankfully Göteborg turned on an icy drizzle and biting wind, which shook me out of my stupor long enough to find some delicious Indian food (Channa Massala is the same in any language) and fall into bed at about 8:30 for the heaviest 12 hour sleep of my life. Friday was spent strolling around the city on the lookout for food and coffee – it’s quite a beautiful city, although the harbour, which I expected to be spectacular, was just a giant industrial port. Cindy arrived at 5ish and we found ourselves some pizza and had a nice early night in preparation for the journey to Denmark.
posted by Michael at 10:00 pm
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