Two Days in Gothenburg (July 21, 22, 2023)

July 21, 2023 to July 22, 2023

A Failed Laundry Attempt for Dave, and Two Ferries

Last night when we arrived the town was hopping. We learned by talking to a guy from Minnesota at the table next to us at dinner that this was the weekend of the Gothia Cup, a famous international youth soccer tournament. There were kids everywhere. It was a mob scene but kind of fun too. Gothenburg is a working town. It has a huge harbor and employed thousands of workers at the port, but the city fell on hard times in the 1970’s when the boom faded and automation started taking away high paying dockyard jobs. It’s been rejuvenated to some degree, thanks in no small part to tourism, and we enjoyed the energy. It’s the original home of Volvo and we visited the Volvo Museum (more on that later). There are several large Universities and it has a student vibe (even without the soccer kids). It has a large immigrant population too.

Teams waiting to load onto their busses.

We learned from visiting the Gothenburg City Museum that Gothenburg is over 400 years old. It was chartered in 1621 when the ruling king of Sweden, Gustaff II Adolphus, decided to build a “perfect city.” It was the beginning of Sweden’s century of power and there was a European trend at the time to build cities from scratch (think Palmova in Italy and Amsterdam in the Netherlands). In the Museum we saw the early drawings for the city —some early land use planning. For four hundred years the city was been more or less prosperous through trade and fishing, with the Dutch and English having had an outsize influence. It was never in the Hanseatic League.

King Gustaff II Adolphus pointing to the spot where he proclaimed, "We will build our city here." To which the pigeon replied, "Meh. Wherever."

Gothenburg has excellent cycling infrastructure except in a couple of places in the center where there are a bewildering number of trams intersecting, and at these huge squares there is no intersection traffic control. It’s disconcerting because we have now gotten so used to the orderliness of Scandinavian traffic that our brains just kind of shut off.

We stayed at the Hotel Royal - which I would recommend. It has operated since 1852 in Gothenburg and sits a bit obscurely on an unobtrusive corner, but it’s a reasonably upscale nice hotel (good A/C). We had the cheapest room in the house (about $250) but it was still nice, and big enough so that we could spread out. No tubs though, but very nice staff. The guy that checked us in, John-Erik, had worked there for 42 years.

Dave had an aborted laundry attempt. Friday morning he gathered up our laundry and rode two miles to a dry cleaner that advertised it also did laundry. (In Sweden it’s hard to find a laundromat). The ride was kind of nerve racking as it was in a part of town that we hadn’t been to and the cycling wasn’t nearly as easy. Dave had to deal with lots of busses, trams and traffic in general. When he arrived, the shop had a note on the door that itt was on summer hours and was only open between 2 to 6 (rather than the advertised 10 to 6). So he bagged it and we just forwent clean clothes. The good news: our hotel had an electrically heated towel rack in our bathroom which we employed as an improvised dryer, so we did some unscheduled hand washing.

On Saturday we had a big day - for us. We had a planned ferry ride at 4:45 pm from Gothenburg harbor to Frederikshavn (about 3 and a half hours) and then a midnight ferry from Frederikshavn to Oslo arriving in Oslo at 10 am the next day. Because we had time to kill in Gothenburg before our ferry ride we rode the 12 km west from the Centrum to the Volvo Museum which actually was pretty interesting. It traced the evolution of Volvo cars, trucks, engines etc along with the history of Europe and the World. The gift shop was too good and we purchased some small Volvo trucks for our grandson Nick, items which will be rattling around in the bottom of our panniers for the next 6 weeks! Due to our very limited packing space, we rarely get the opportunity to shop for souvenirs.

Crossing the river on our way to the Volvo museum

A view from the top of the bridge towards the harbor's entrance.

On the ride out to the Volvo Museum we also stopped and reconnoitered the ferry terminal — which was a good thing. We continue to have a hard time finding the loading areas in these ports for bicycles. Once you know where you are going it’s a piece of cake but a pre-sailing reconnaissance appears to be necessary for us.

Before our ferry ride we had a late lunch at the Gothenburg Market — we wish we could enjoy that kind of market in Bend. Dave especially enjoys visiting these markets. He envisions shopping there and then returning home to do his cooking thing. When he's in one of these expansive makets, he's the veritable kid in the candy store. At lunch we had a delightful conversation with our server Jasmine, who had actually spent a few days in Bend, Oregon on a US road trip a few years ago! (We are finding most Europeans have been to New York, California and maybe Florida but not too much in between.)

The ferry to Frederikshavn was jammed with kids going home from the Gothia Cup. It was a madhouse . Fortunately I had sprung an extra 5 euros apiece for assigned seats on the ferry so we didn’t have to hip check any kids out of the way to get a seat.

In Frederikshavn we tried — unsuccessfully — to find the DFDS ferry terminal office. I had experienced some computer challenges when I booked our trip online and was only able to book one bicycle instead of two. I was hoping to correct it before we had to board but we couldn’t find the office (which you think would not be that hard with google maps and the fact that we were standing in the port area - but it was).

We had almost 3 hours to kill in Frederikshavn so we rode into the center and found a little French bistro where we had a light dinner and they let us sit there until 11 pm. We were able to watch Stage 20 of the Tour de France on Dave’s tablet which was a good way to kill the time as the stage was quite exciting. At 11 pm we cycled over to the port, all went smoothly and we loaded at 11: 45 pm. The ferries treat bicycles really well: we have always gotten to load first, before any other vehicles, and there is always a set space to keep the bikes. On this ferry there were straps to anchor our bikes.

The ferry itself was pretty old — it had late 1980s decor (remember the shiny brassy gold era) and was run down. We had sprung for a very small inside cabin with tiny twin beds but it actually worked out great. We had much-appreciated quick showers (after our long day traveling we were pretty sticky) and more or less passed out in our dark little cabin, notwithstanding a dog barking in the next room and kids running outside in the hall. We slept until 8 am when the Swedish ferry announcer said something in Swedish and woke us up. The breakfast buffet was very cruise like - tons of people in a huge dining hall - and it reminded me of why I don’t want to cruise. As a counterbalance to that we had a fun conversation with a Cypriot family at the table next to us. They were on a fjords tour to escape the heat back on Cyprus.

Coming into Oslo was great. It was a beautiful day (no wind) and we were excited to be in Norway.

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