Thursday, 16.01, Gothenburg - Stockholm

In the last few days, my blog has seen an increasing international influx. After consultation with the management I will therefore be updating it in English from now on.

Gothenburg is also a good example of the thesis from my last entry about the beautiful mixture of old and new, although the city has made a more cosmopolitan impression on me than Malmö. My tour of the city simply consisted of following the route suggested by the tourist information. I guess it covered the most important things.

Slowly, the length of the day made it clear that the journey was heading north.

Well, maybe I should pay attention to my down-to-earthness after all. German it is. To match that, here's a little anecdote about the theme "Germans can be found in the farthest corner of the earth behind the last bush" (to entertain the reader, slightly exaggerated, the writing style should give a little taste of what a bad novel about my journey would be like. Of course, I would never write so disgustingly!): Desperately, I gazed at the majestic Skansen Krojan Tower, located high on a hill, offering a beautiful view of Gothenburg. "How do I get up there?" I muttered quietly into my shaggy beard. Suddenly, two young people rushed up. They, too, stared at the steep muddy slope with a questioning look. It was hardly an option to walk around the hill to the official entrance. Slowly, their eyes wandered to me. "Do you know the way up, sir?" Obviously, they concluded from my appearance adjusted to the local norm that I was of Viking descent and familiar with the place. Wisely smiling, I replied: "We can also speak German...". With tears of joy in our eyes, we embraced and began the tough climb to the summit. It was only the first of many adventures.

That's how I met Micha and Melissa from Stuttgart, who study physics and started their Erasmus in Gothenburg a few days ago. After we parted ways shortly afterwards (they had something to do in their apartment), I treated myself to Köttbullar in a nice fish market hall before heading to Stockholm. There, I found a relatively comfortable and affordable hostel, checked out the surroundings, had a Döner plate (not as good as in Berlin, but that was clear), and was eventually kept awake for a while by a guy who had turned up his headphones as loud as a speaker but could fall asleep himself... I just don't understand that, but with the other roommate, I started a rebellion which led to turning off the hellishly bad (of course, German) music, which allowed this day to end peacefully as well.

Sorry for the delay in the last reports, I hope the extremely high quality makes up for it. It's just that I have much less time than I thought. My day actually consists of getting up quite early (stupid check-out times...) and walking around the city for hours with sporadic visits to museums. So even with just one day, I really feel like I have developed a sense of each city. I really enjoy this way of exploring, and it is probably especially promoted by the fact that I am traveling alone. I have to admit that (as nice as he was) Hugo somehow felt like a burden for this reason on the first day. In the last two days, I also went out late at night in search of Northern Lights (spoiler: I was successful :)).

Anyway, in the next few days, I will try to be more productive. Right now, I'm sitting on the train from the Arctic Circle to Oslo via Trondheim. Estimated arrival in Oslo in 18 hours... Hopefully, the layover in Trondheim will be nice.