My very short stint in Gothenburg was nearly made even
shorter as I barely made the bus out of Stockholm. What I had thought
was a conservative schedule to get my ass to the bus station was completely
annihilated after being stranded on the fourth floor of my hotel for 15 minutes.
They were making repairs to one of the two elevators, consequently, the one
functioning elevator was being severely taxed by all the lazy Germans that
refused to walk up or down a single flight of stairs. I stood there in a huff,
scowling at the elevator’s floor display as it crawled to one floor,
paused for an eternity and then crawled to the next floor. As time dragged
on, I seriously debated throwing myself and my heavy bags down the four flights
of stairs in the interest of just getting out of the building in my lifetime.
Despite doing my best to speedwalk/jog with my bags to the subway
stop, I missed the train that I wanted by about 30 seconds. I had to wait
another 12 minutes for the next train which would have still gotten me there
in plenty of time if it didn’t make inexplicable, lengthy stops at each
station on the way into town. (So it turns out that the trains are
unreliable!) By the time I got to the central train station I had about four
minutes to sprint the length of the station, get launched to street level
by the escalators, cross the street and find my way to gate 38, deep inside
the bus station. If I had been anywhere else in the world I wouldn’t
have panicked like I did since inter-city buses never leave on time, but I
knew full well that punctuality was followed to the letter in Scandinavia.
If the bus schedule says it leaves at 9:00 then it goddamn well will pull
out at exactly 9:00.
I made it to the bus with no time to spare. All of that running
with my baggage had resulted in the expected river of sweat down my back and
my condition was made worse when I clamored onto the bus. It was nearly full
with prompt Swedes that had all been sitting there for 20 minutes and all
those bodies had heated up the inside of the bus to what seemed like a scorching
and musty 90°. The bus wasn’t running so there was zero air circulation.
I sat down next to the smallest person on the bus, in order to maximize my
personal space, and proceeded to flop sweat all over the place. The poor girl
must have been horrified as I’m sure that I probably looked like a heroin
junkie going through withdrawal.
The bus ride was long. Seven hours. The train would have only
been three and a half hours, but the bus was half the price and I planned
on sitting and writing the entire time. Well, after four hours, both of my
laptop batteries were dead and I was wishing I had had the brains to pay for
the train. Unlike Norway, Sweden is about as flat as Kansas, so watching the
scenery was not a part of the entertainment schedule. I was too tired to read
and the bus driver was driving like he was in the Paris to Dakar Rally, so
the constant jerks left and right, sudden stops and hard accelerations kept
me bouncing around far too much to sleep. Then God decided to make me even
more miserable by causing, of all things, a traffic jam outside of Gothenburg.
I didn’t think Sweden had enough cars in the entire country to cause
a traffic jam anywhere, but there we were, stuck. I got off the bus after
eight and a half hours and lurched to my hostel.
I was heartened to see that the Gothenburg hostel was much
closer to the action than the Ibis. Beyond that, the Gothenburg hostel
was easily one of the worst hostels I have ever stayed in. Upon arrival, I
had to search the entire hostel to find the desk clerk who was hiding in the
back of the community kitchen. My free and unfettered wanderings around the
hostel left me a little uncertain about security, but that was only the beginning.
One bad thing after another came to my attention. The lighting in the place
was only slightly better than the lighting in my colon, there was no soap
or paper towels in any of the bathrooms - a germaphobe’s nightmare -
and there was a surprise charge of 50 kroner ($6.25) for their pathetic breakfast
spread.
Not having eaten since 7:30AM, I headed out immediately to find
food. My spirits were lifted dramatically by what I found. Pasta Etc., only
about a half block from the hostel, looked like a crappy, generic, Italian
place a la the Spaghetti Factory from the name, but it was fabulous. Not only
was their menu utterly packed with affordable, succulent sounding meals, but
I was informed immediately by the cute and friendly waitress that glasses
of wine were only 25 kroner (just over three bucks) before 7:00PM! I promptly
ordered the house white, got settled into my comfortable window seat and started
leafing through all the Gothenburg tourist brochures I picked up in the
hostel lobby.
I knew from a previous visit that Gothenburg was a great
city, so it came as little surprise that the visitor guide was packed full
of groovy things to do and see, even for an anti-tourist like myself. The
fantastic food, the cheap wine and the long list of places I wanted to go,
put me right back into the mood for some action.
Then it started to rain. Hard. And it kept raining until three
hours before I left the city two days later. This was the most terrible, ceaseless
rain I had seen in a very long while. I managed to get out to a bar with a
fellow hostel resident on my first night. When we left, the rain was lightening
up, so I just brought an umbrella, but when God saw this, he opened the heavens
and I was soaked from the chest down by the time we got to the bar. Fortunately
the bar had Strongbow cider on tap (a rarity outside of England), so I was
not miserable for long.
With the rain coming down in sheets the following morning, I
ventured out to the local library to check my email in the morning and again,
even with an umbrella and a raincoat, I was soaked. I tried to find
the courage to venture out and roam the city, but I didn’t have the
strength. I spent the entire day either at the library or in the hostel. I
was devastated. I desperately wanted to see the city, but my schedule required
me to leave for Malmö the following morning, so I was quickly being robbed
of the opportunity to see Gothenburg. And I wasn’t the only one.
The hostel was full of people hiding from the rain. Despite the hostel’s
no alcohol policy, beer was being smuggled in by the six-pack and everyone
was shitfaced by 2:00 in the afternoon. I was also disappointed that, if you
hadn’t noticed already, the precipitation level was so prohibitively
high that I was too chicken to pull out my high price camera for even one
photo, lest it choke on the moisture and die an expensive death.
That evening, I sprinted through the rain to Pasta Etc., for
yet another delicious meal and three glasses of 25 kroner wine. Again, I was
baited into leaving the hostel for a few drinks when the rain lightened up.
After we arrived at the bar, it started to piss down so hard that no one wanted
to leave. We all got plastered and then finally relented and walked back through
the downpour at midnight
On the day of my departure, the rain had nearly abated. I was
able to haul myself and my bags to the train station with only minimal water
damage. Then, as if on cue, thee hours before my train left, the clouds disappeared
and the sun shone with almost a mocking intensity. I locked and alarmed my
bags in a train station locker and headed out for an abbreviated tour of the
shopping district. I wandered around a huge, domed street mall where I observed
several talented street acts and a bizarre, poor man’s candid camera
moment. While I was blissfully walking along, I noticed a women standing in
the middle of the mall, with her head down, preoccupied with something in
her bag. I looked down at the bag and saw a very poorly made lens hole in
the side of the bag, sloppily cut and taped up with black electrical tape,
as if she had just cobbled it together out in her car five minutes earlier.
She had the camera trained on a young man and an older gentleman who were
talking to one another. Since they were conversing in Swedish, I was not privy
to the subject of the conversation, but I stopped and stared just the same
until I was satisfied that I had not just hallucinated the whole incident.
After watching some impressive singer/musicians I stumbled upon
my first juggler of the trip. He was just a teenager, doing basic three club
tricks. I grabbed a slice of pizza and sat down to watch him. Without a rap
and without doing anything too impressive, the poor kid wasn’t doing
very well tip-wise. I was debating going up and talking to him. It’s
always nice to meet another juggler, but meeting European jugglers is a little
different. If you meet a juggler/street performer in the States, usually they
will talk amiably with you for a short while and then you go your separate
ways. The street performers that I have met in Europe have usually gone a
little further and invited me to juggle with them. This usually back fires
on them in a big way, because inevitably after 20 years of juggling, I am
much more technically proficient than they are and I end up showing them up
in front of their audience. They goad and goad until I relent and agree to
juggle a little. Then the color drains from their faces as I warm up
with five balls and it just gets worse from there. Juggling is a hobby centered
around one concept: Showing off. In my desire to wow them, I often wind up
drawing a bigger audience than they had before I showed up as I pull out all
the stops and then they are left standing there with their three clubs and
a newly spoiled audience that clears within seconds of them resuming their
usual shtick. Realizing the problems I was causing, I just watch from afar
now or flatly turn down their offers to juggle with them.
The lack of action finally got to the teenage juggler. He gave
up, packed up and left while I was still eating, so the internal debate of
whether to accost him or not was quickly ended. I debated whether or not to
wander out of the shopping district and see something more appealing than
284 clothing stores, but time was running short and I still needed to navigate
my way back to the station, so I turned around, found the station and boarded
my train.
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