Gothenburg, Sweden

28 July - 3 August 2009

I felt I needed a break once I made it to Gothenburg. The luggage had been incredibly heavy to carry and I have since reconsidered how to pack it. I was staying at Christian's apartment, but he was away kayaking until Friday.

We had a static training session on the first morning. I struggled a bit, but did OK. My two buddies then showed me up with a PB each. I went for a bit of a walk in the afternoon to get my bearings but generally rested and figured out what the city had to offer.

Training on Thursday was in a 50m pool again. I tried a dynamic which was going pretty well until a member of the public jumped on my head at 100m. In the afternoon I wandered around the town and discovered the Haga (old working class area). I even managed to fit in a well overdue hair cut. Jens took me salsa dancing in the evening so the red party dress had it's first outing of the trip. Unfortunately I seem to have very little rhythm or co-ordination and I didn't really bring dancing shoes. It was fun though.

I had a great plan for Friday and decided to go ahead with it despite the weather. I did the Open top bus tour, which was incredibly cold, but luckily it didn't rain. I even did the unthinkable and purchased a tourist plastic poncho. It didn't quite rain though so I was not obliged to wear it!

Then I took a boat out to the New Alvsborg fortress. This is an island at the habour mouth. It we essentially where the city of Gothenburg defended itself from invaders coming in on the sea. It was pretty miserable. The fortress was dull and the weather horrendous – I was almost blown right of the island. I waited in the cafe until the boat came back for us, and ate my packed lunch.

Back in the city I rode the elevator up an 86m high building nicknamed the Lipstick to see the view.

Then visited the Gothenburg city museum and the Botanic gardens before heading back to the apartment. Christian had arrived home, so I finally met him in the flesh, and we went to his friend Patrick's home for some drinks with some of the friends he had been kayaking with. Another late night!

We trained dynamics on Saturday morning. Finally I had a fairly successful session with my fin on in the 50m pool. From the pool I went to the Rohsska (design) museum which had a few interesting exhibitions: a couple of fashion designers, Swedish design generally and one quite fun one with hundreds of citrus squeezers of all shapes, sizes and colours.

Gothenburg Art museum however, was a bit disappointing.

Afterwards I needed to sit down and took a Paddan boat canal tour so I could have a rest. Fortunately the sun had come out again and it was quite pleasant. I then visited the Universeum, which had aquariums of all sorts of fish including specific tanks of fish from places around Sweden. I also visited the dangerous creatures area and the rainforest where there were birds, monkeys, iguanas, frogs etc roaming free in a simulated rainforest environment. It was pretty good.

The final visit for the day was to the adjacent amusement park: Liseberg. I didn't really feel like going on rides so I wandered around and watched a show. I was getting pretty tired and headed home. I think I spent 13 hours out being busy and over-did it a little.

Sunday, therefore, became another tourist rest day. We managed a sleep in as Christian had been out late too at the U2 concert. We trained late morning and I had some success with attempting a no fins max in the 50m pool. I spent the afternoon preparing for my trip to Denmark the following day. We bought a chunk of moose meat and some smoked reindeer for dinner, which Patrick cooked exquisitly for us with an entree of mushrooms on white toast and ice-cream & chocolate for dessert. Unfortunately this was the fourth late night in a row, and I had an early morning start to pack my bags again and get on ferry to Frederikshavn, Demark. It all went pretty well but the 1.1km walk between the ferry and the train with my 40kg bags was a killer. I think I'll get a taxi on the return trip next week!