Göteborg yearnings

There is something almost ludicrous about starting a travel review before having travelled, yet in the spirit of a vaguely gripping narrative arc, it feels worth setting the scene...

It was the point in the semester where days begins to merge together, each drowning in a sort of mediocrity punctuated only by the occasional birthday party or sports society event. Essays creep ever closer, never suddenly but with just enough of a vague hint of menace, prowling your calendar in the knowledge that they could disrupt next year's plans in the faraway land Vic and Bob once titled 'abroad'.

In this incredibly tepid scene comes a most delightfully vivid of eavesdrops. By which, a flatmate's friend was politely conversing with those of us with nowhere better to be on a Sunday night than in the kitchen on our phones. The newsflash was immediately eye-brow raising, heart fluttering, screen locking for it offered a respite, an escape from the blandness of library and lectures. Flights from Edinburgh for £8. At once, tedium could be broken, problems could be frozen in time, Swedish could be lightly tested in the name of a cultural experience. Flights and hostel were booked in less than 2 hours.

The only time I paused to reflect came strangely enough when Michael O'Leary asked if I wanted to give him more money in the name of carbon offsetting. This presented a sudden guilt, an awareness that my actions were at best a pitiful attempt at greenwashing, and at worst an unsustainable, reckless act contributing more to the environmental destruction of our planet than anything else I'd done since a bat with a persistent cough started wreaking havoc long ago.

After I'd paid £2 towards this Faustian pact, I was reminded of Joachim Trier's 'The Worst Person in the World', which sadly missed out on an Oscar win. A film capturing a woman's existential millenial angst, along the way we meet Eivind, an upbeat, outward looking man who is pushed towards the protagonist's life by exhaustion, caused by his girlfriend's environmental activism which his head supports but his heart can't sustain. Having organised School Strikes for the Climate whilst at Sixth Form, and seen the gulf between rhetoric and policy legislation among politicians around the world, I was captivated by what I perceived as Eivind's nihilism towards the future, for him a useful blame avoidance strategy which liberated his ego. It was on this ropiest of moral tightropes that I justified my trip, and began googling (Ecosia-ing) what on earth I was going to do in Gothenburg in three weeks time. I was joined on my exploits by two Swedish class mates, who will be identified (with their consent) as ‘bubbly psycho’ and ‘aspiring hermit’ respectively.

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The flight itself was non-eventful, passing without incident almost entirely across the North Sea, briefly skirting Denmark en route. Only upon approaching Gothenburg, in view of the dense forest that defines much of the Swedish landscape, did I begin to feel nervous. This was my first time in Sweden since that ‘sliding doors’ holiday of 2018, which defined my educational choices to this point. A subtle fear gripped me that was yet to evaporate as we landed, that I am merely krill in an ocean, out of my depth and waiting to be swept away by the currents of the big bad outside world. 

Though out of my comfort zone, tedium gave way to technicolour. I knew I was in Sweden having smiled at signs for SAAB technologies on the shuttle bus, shortly after gawping at the large Volvo on a plinth in the airport itself.

My Swedish small talk with the border guard reassured me of my inadequacies, as did a successful conversation with a Swede from Malmö whose hostel bed I had taken, though I mistook the word for bed for bath.

The hostel itself was functional, yet minimalist to the extent that I woke up from my first nights sleep more fatigued than when I went to bed, having been woken in the night by roommates and traffic alike. None of this boded well for a day of island-hopping. 

Travelling via tram to the port, we loitered in the windswept sun before being ferried to the island of Styrsö. At once stereotypes were being fulfilled, every house name was Nordic, every house was red-top and the sea was the clearest blue. A population below 2000, cars on Styrsö are largely shunned in favour of three-wheeled mopeds and bicycles, the four of five villages connected by narrow roads and footpaths. The lack of explicit tourist-oriented features was part of its appeal.

The only moment of regret came after traversing the island, to be encountered by a woman asking us what we were looking for. Where I stumbled trying to find the word for port, she began shouting in what we will boldly describe as Danish, given that neither me, psycho or the hermit could deduce any intelligible words. It was a prescient reminder of the language barrier faced when living or studying abroad, even as bureaucracy becomes increasingly bilingual.

After Styrsö came the island of Källö, an island small enough that we were almost instantly concerned with how we would spend the two hours on this tiny island of 400-odd locals without an obvious form of entertainment. Sitting on a bench for half an hour helped, as did each taking turns to climb a large rock, posing for the half dozen pixels that our phone cameras could afford us from such distances. It made sense retrospectively that we were the only non-locals to disembark on Källö and then the only passengers to get on the ferry when it eventually salvaged us. The stoic ferry conductor’s subtle nod hinted at a broader allegory I’m sure he considered conveying.

Jeopardised by erratic ferry timetables, psycho informed us that it wouldn’t be possible to disembark on another island without either waiting till dusk or being stranded overnight. Indeed a trip to Brannö had to be aborted for precisely this reason. Instead we returned to the mainland and embarked on a voyage as noble as any other, one to compensate for the lack of touristic activity witnessed earlier - fika. Specifically a cinnamon bun big enough to feed a pre-adolescent for the day. It lasted me to breakfast the following morning. Even cinnamon-sceptic hermit quietly approved.

But behind my sun-dried face sat a man exhausted. A man who needed sleep of a quality greater than that of a cryogenically frozen sleeping beauty to optimally function in the upcoming days. Such rest was not forthcoming, but it failed to deter me from going on a run the following morning. My delirium and lunacy is evidently not solely sleep-related.

In packing running kit, I effectively force myself to justify my luggage, and after earlier exploits in Brugge, I find that running is a quick way to both sightsee and gain bearings in an unfamiliar city. Given that I knew what sort of day lay ahead, it was never my intention to run 11km, but part of the act of gaining bearings requires a certain degree of getting lost, though it’s safe to say I surpassed even these wildest of expectations. Despite these challenges, I managed to find a statue of Poseidon, an old Swedish king (more on him later) and various old, important buildings along with a couple of viewpoints on frustratingly steep hills. 

By the time I made it back, I was worryingly late, not that psycho or hermit minded, I even sense that they were subtly grateful for now being in the company of someone who knew how to travel from the hostel to Gothenburg city museum via a funky statue of Poseidon.

Last year, Gothenburg celebrated its 400th birthday and the museum marked it with an exhibition that devoted what felt like half of the floor space to the hundreds of years that predated the city itself. To save you the £8 flight expense/a Wikipedia search, the history of the city is roughly as follows:

Gothenburg, like most other cities in the region, was originally burnt down by the Danes. But as the story goes - somewhat ripped off from Ancient Rome - King Gustaf Adolf stood on a hill and declared that a new city would be built in the meadows down below, and the fortified city was duly chartered in 1621. As the age of war graduated into an age of industry, Gothenburg - with its rivers and canals - became an important trading city, enabling the rise of a strong merchant class as well as dense squalor. Following the end of the American Civil War, emigration from Sweden began to rapidly increase towards the end of the 19th century, with Gothenburg serving an important role as a point of departure for Swedes from across the country. More recently, this trend has reversed as Gothenburg has seen immigration consistently increase over the last 20 years, with non-natives now constituting around a quarter of the population.

The sections on the city itself were engaging, and had I not felt hungry and tired with 11km already in my legs, I likely could have stayed for longer. But lunch and a second museum were calling and, given the lack of time afforded to us on this long weekend, these calls were answered. 

The Gothenburg Museum of Art, psycho informed us, has a trip advisor review criticising the museum for having too many Swedish artists exhibited. This is both unsurprising and also inaccurate, given the number of international paintings I walked past (by Rembrandt, Monet and Gauguin to name a few), and also that most of the Swedish artists featured learned their trade at schools in either Paris or Rome. Had I had longer, I would’ve liked to have spent more time in front of these paintings, and considered their contribution to National Romantic movements of their era. But alas. Later that evening we returned outside the museum to take some more Poseidon photos, this time at sunset and in front of an elaborate fountain lit up in various colours.

There were two conversations with strangers from the hostel that stuck out to me, both men whose names have been lost to the memories that never were. The first was an Italian Naval Engineering student and Interrailer whose travels were being curtailed and hurried by an exam next week. He spoke of his regret towards the timing and also of the culture shock between Northern and Southern Europe, though expressing a preference for the quiet ‘normal life’ of Kiruna compared to the more southerly city life of Gothenburg. The second man was a Swede, with a thunderous voice of authority that commanded your attention whilst he regaled stories of nearly being robbed, of being married to a Dane involved with the Embassy in Argentina, and of his opinions more generally. In our room we debated topics as broad as former Prime Minister Erlander’s foreign policy, French Radicalism, and the deindustrialisation of our respective cities. The man, who bore a passing resemblance to an overweight Steve Coogan, was particularly excited to hear that I come from the town of Land Rover, having once owned one himself. 

Hostels themselves are the strangest of locations, a temporary commune of the travelling and travailed, bringing people together in ways hotels can barely dream of. This hostel in particular was high on Danish and German visitors, with an imperfect English acting as a bridge to foster conversation. A particular highlight came when one guest asked me to proofread and spellcheck their Swedish. It’s a relief not knowing how bad a job I did.

Today, our final day, began not with the boisterousness of a run, but with the burden of an early check out and attempts to demolish all remaining food, with decidedly mixed results. Then, having not yet sufficiently annoyed psycho or hermit, I galvanised what spirits remained uncrushed and led them on a walk around Delsjön, the reservoir that serves the city of Gothenburg and is accessible by tram and an uphill walk. Surrounded by forest which psycho seemingly recognised from an IKEA advert, our loop undulated around the larger lake and was tackled at a pleasant pace. After all, this was a location to savour.

The water was transparent, the forest largely silent. It spoke of a gentle peace and tranquility that cannot be found in city living, but can be aspired towards in oneself. By the time we finished, we were tired but happy, safe in the knowledge that we had managed to escape the real world, not just for a few hours but for a few days.

With hours to fill before the flight, we bounded back into Gothenburg to visit elk and red squirrels in Slottskogen’s animal park, fulfilling a goal of hermit’s before departure. We then returned to Haga to browse merchandise and contemplate whether it was worth spending £3 on a postcard and stamp. 

Gothenburg is an intriguing city, currently experiencing major redevelopment, with cranes and hard hats a major part of the landscape at present. It has the most cycle-friendly network of any city I’ve seen outside the Netherlands and - with a strong, integrated public transport system - travelling around was a breeze. It is difficult to draw conclusions from a distorting, short weekend, but it is a city with depth, character and history, constantly changing and redeveloping whilst retaining much of its older charm, especially around the riverside and the Haga district (home to excessively sized cinnamon buns and excessively priced everything else).

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But this trip, and more broadly this article, hasn’t really been about Gothenburg, it’s history or the logistical nightmare of ferry timetables. Rather it’s about escapism, the ability to remove yourself from the stresses and strains of day-to-day reality, even if they will come crashing down upon return. For what it’s worth, this has been largely written in the departure lounge at Gothenburg airport, awaiting a delayed 23:40 Ryanair plane that leaves two hours after the penultimate flight of the night. The Tuesday morning at least will have to be written off. On Wednesday, I begin a 48 hour exam. 

The attraction of the real world has never felt weaker.