The Travelling Pixie in Sweden.

Oh my, I hadn’t realised that I’ve put off writing the post on Gothenburg for soooooo long!  It’s been over a month since we visited Sweden!

[2016.10.10] Gothenburg; Day 3

Following my post on Stockholm, we took the 11:30 train to Gothenburg.  Sadly, it was one of the worst train rides I’ve ever taken!  The train itself wasn’t bad actually, the space between the rows of seats were, thankfully, very spacious, however, the ride itself felt very bumpy – it was a very difficult sensation to pinpoint with words.  I am particularly prone to motion-sickness, and I’ve found that I prefer to ride a train backward-facing.  So firstly, sitting at a forward-facing seat contributed to me feeling nauseous, and secondly, the train ride itself made me feel like I was hovering above the tracks!?  I was like floating, and oh it was horrible! – I don’t think I could explain it any better.  To make things worse, the ride was three hours, and it took every ounce of strength to keep myself from throwing up at my seat.

Okay, after we got off the train, all I had to do was to catch my breath, and thank goodness, the worst was behind me.

We planned our 2.5-day-stay at Gothenburg to be one of relaxation.  Arriving at 2pm, we first checked into our hotel which was only a 5-minute walk from the train station.  We then just strolled around the city and walked to the Haga Old Town.

I have to say that I wasn’t particularly fond of the Old Town, as it felt like nothing was open, nor were there many people.  I guess it was either that we came at a quieter time of the day, or we just came in the wrong season!  It was quite disappointing as the tourist brochures boasted of how festive the Haga was! – the photos were brilliant, with festive decorations and loads of people huddling together, hands clasped around their hot coffees (or hot chocolates as I would prefer!)

We walked around the Haga for a while, and not really finding anything of interest, we gave up and started heading back to the hotel.  It was quite an uneventful ‘adventure’ around Gothenburg as the skies were getting dark early, and our tropical blood literally begged us to leave the cold.  But the next day was such a day to look forward to as we were going to the Slottsskogen Animal Park!

 

[2016.10.11] Gothenburg; Day 4

Right, so the next day when we woke up, we headed to the Gothenburg City Museum first.  We were suggested by the staff at the Tourist Information Centre to visit the City Museum as it was regarded as one the best museums in Gothenburg.

When we got there, we realised that despite the interior of the museum being quite spacious, many of the exhibition rooms were empty!  WHYYYY?  It was quite disappointing and we soon found out why the museum’s admission charge is free.  It’s simply because there really isn’t too much to see, and it just took us under an hour to see everything!

However, despite it all, there is something I found VERY interesting!  The mechanism on the right is a calculator – of sorts.  I still haven’t really figured out how to work it (as the video accompanying this was extremely long!)  It’s really unfortunate that it was enclosed in a very large glass encasing which stopped me from taking closer photos of it!

This is called a Sauter’s Calculating Machine, and here’s the description of it by the museum:

The machine itself is a round brass object about 20cm across and 5cm high.  It stands on a square mahogany wooden box.  Because both the box and the calculating machine have metal feet they look like tiny furniture.

On the top surface of the round calculating machine are numerous white enamel circles with numbers on.  The circles are different sizes; some are round and some are semi-circles, but all of them have numbers.  Each circle has a lever and several large levers extend from the machine’s central point.

The calculating machine has a German inscription that says “A machine to count with quickly and reliably without thinking”.

So I’m guessing that this is the Nordic version of the Abacus! – SIMPLY AMAZING, and also so much more aesthetically pleasing!

After our short encounter with the Gothenburg City Museum, we headed to the Slottsskogen Animal Park! – My highlight of the day!

 

Well, it was a little disappointing as the staff at the Tourist Information Centre told us that there will be foxes, penguins and moose, yet the pens in the park were quite empty!

The walk to Slottsskogen itself was a little over 30 minutes, but finding the way to the Animal pens from inside the park proved much harder!  It took us quite a while to get there, only to find most of the pens empty!  There were some red deer, and as the photo above shows, ponies, but that was all.  It was quite upsetting really!  I was superrrrr looking forward to meet some majestic moose and foxes and penguins! But oh well, at least a got a nice photo with a pony!

But this concludes our fourth day in Sweden.  Well again, it was quite uneventful and dull, but with a spark of surprise every there and then

 

[2016.10.12] Gothenburg; Day 5
Our flight was scheduled to be this evening at 18:00, so we decided to go to one last place before we leave Sweden.  We headed to Gotheburg’s Fashion and Design Museum!

Oh Yes!  The admission for this museum is also free, and there wasn’t ALOT to see in there, but there were some interesting pieces nonetheless!

This piece on the left was by Alexander McQueen.  I love the print and the collar, it was simply exquisite!

There were many more pieces, yet I couldn’t get decent photos of them (either the light wasn’t so good or I couldn’t take photos of the details) – the photos wouldn’t do the garments justice!

After our short little detour to the Fashion and Design Museum, we headed back to the hotel to grab our suitcases and headed for the airport.

We took a coach from the train station to the airport, as this was the only means of transportation.

This was actually the last installation I saw in Gothenburg (at the train station) before boarding the coach to the Gothenburg Airport.  Quite fitting with my current emotions, exactly how I feel about this vacation coming to an end, and this was the last photo I took of Gothenburg – on the coach ride to the airport.

Gothenburg was a really beautiful city, I absolutely loved it as a vacation spot, but I guess that as a whole, this trip to Sweden would’ve been even better had we gone in Summer!  I could already imagine how beautiful the weather would be, the light summer breeze blowing through our hair while we picnic in the parks – ah, glorious!