Göteborg, Sweden (Post #32)
On Sunday July 31st, Mike (with Michele’s supervision) writes…
So, after taking the Bergen-Oslo train back to Oslo, staying way out in the suburbs of Oslo at the Rönningen Hostel and taking another train 2 days later, we are now in Göteborg, Sweden. Actually, this is our third night consecutive night in Sweden but we did have to leave Göteborg for one night and go to Varberg, a small coastal town, because every form of accommodation we checked was booked for the night of Friday the 29th. Apparently this was due to the fact that some band called U2 was playing a large show here that night. I think this band pretty much took over the city because about 1 out of 2 people seemed to be wearing a U2 shirt. Our hostel experience in Varberg was good and bad. It was very interesting because it was located inside a medieval fortress but it was bad because we had to sleep with the light on to keep the silverfish away and because my bed (Mike’s) was on a slope. Every few hours i would wake up to find that my sheets had slid most of the way off the bed. So, this place currently ranks in second (worst) behind the Fit Hostel in Iceland.
Anyway… Our first night in Göteborg, we went to a bar i found on metaltravelguide.com, called Rock Baren. While we had a great time there and met a couple of friendly headbangers who bought us a round of beer it certainly was not as cool as the times we had in Trondheim, Norway. However, the music being played, as opposed to what we were hearing on the CD player before the show at Rock City (Trondheim) was true metal (Sepultura, Nightwish…) not hard rock (Motley Crue, Kiss…). Some of the people we met encouraged us to go to a local metal fest called MetalTown ,while others suggested we go to something called Metal Meet (which was apparently also to include some “pro-wrestling” ??!!). We opted to go to neither after discovering the price for MetalTown was about 75USD and because we are not that fond of Entombed (the headliner for Metal Meet). It is worth mentioning that there is some anti-American sentiment here(mostly directed at George Bush). I hope America’s reputation will eventually recover.
Right now we are about to walk out the hotel door to check out Slottsskogsparken where the natural history museum and botanical garden are located.
Tomorrow, Monday August 1, we will take a train to Ystad, a very small town in southern Sweden, where we will check out the Swedish version of Stonehenge, “Ales Stenar”.
We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).
Tags: Category #6: Sweden
Michele Harmon
Enjoyed the touch of humor in this and the last posting!