“One’s destination is
never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
– Henry Miller
Well it was finally the
weekend and we all had the same weekend off from placement. So what better way
to spend it then travelling to Sweden’s 2nd biggest city, Göteborg. We travelled for four hours on a bus
with a broken door and without snacks, rookie mistake.
On the way we
did however pass some rather strange things. One of these; a lady and her dog
walking, the dog was carrying the lady’s groceries in his mouth.
We finally
arrive and are starving! We head straight for the food court and the tourist
information centre to collect maps and details about the trams etc. Our own personal
tour guide, Lindsay then leads the way and we successfully make it to our
hostel. Upon getting our keys we all have the initial excitement of finding our
rooms and choosing our beds. Lindsay, Genna and I open our door and are so
excited to see BUNKBEDS! And automatically the stepbrother quotes are flowing,
‘so much room for activities’.
We dumped our
backpacks and were headed on our first ‘touristy’ adventure to the museum of
natural history. The museum itself
was founded in 1833 and is the oldest museum in Göteborg.
It is filled with zoological collections and is most famous
for its life size blue whale. With a free entry and four levels of mystery
awaiting us we couldn’t wait. The first floor we entered was filled with a
massive collection of stuffed birds, interesting. We again managed to find a
little bit of Harry in our day, when observing the marvelous owl collection.
Walking further through the corridors of dead stuffed
animals staring at you we come across the chickens. Now for those of you that
know me well, you will know that I can make one killer chicken sound. So of
course with Emily’s video camera we decided we would make these stuffed
chickens come back to life with a little scenario.
Moving further
along there were rooms filled with reptiles, insects and large fury beasts. We
of course couldn’t help but to pose as a kangaroo with the kangaroos and try
our best at impersonating elephants, the other patrons must have thought we
were incredibly strange. We were all making the most of our museum experience
but the best was still yet to come. After successfully impersonating every
animal possible on the first 2 floors, teaching the girls how to do the ‘emu’
as taught by Ms Bryan in grade 7 and making a David Attenborough documentary we
were headed for the room with the life size blue whale.
They weren’t
joking, this whale was massive and it was only necessary to speak fluent whale
as entering the room (as taught by Dory on Finding Nemo). Although it was impressive we all had
our own individual thoughts about the whale. Genna’s initial instinct was to go
beside and pretend to swim with whale and then continue to say ‘shit imagine if
this just came up next to you in a boat, you’d be screwed’. Emily was taken back to the childhood
memories of Free Willy. Lindsay was blatantly honest and stated that she was
expecting bigger and better things and I was just there speaking rather loud
whale in hope of a reply.
Our museum
trip was coming to an end and I am certain the staff probably couldn’t wait to
get rid of the Australian tourists who took every chance possible to
impersonate, pose and act like the dead stuffed animals.
Museum
complete and upon exiting we couldn’t help but notice one of the biggest
playgrounds Göteborg had to
offer. Just to the left of the park was a maze where we thought it would be
great fun to race each other to the centre. WRONG, this ended with Emily and
myself both having the biggest stacks in the snow, injuries were obtained.
Our playground
trip really proved that we really are just a bunch of kids at heart. I mean
what 20, 21 year olds in Europe go the park to swing on the swings, go down the
slippery dip (and get stuck) pretend we are on the Hogwarts express and
continuously fall over in the snow.
After all I
guess,
“You're
never too old to become younger”.
-
Anonymous
After 2 hours
we managed to leave the park and where were we headed? We had no idea! We
jumped aboard a tram and then walked (and slipped over) for what seemed like
forever in the freezing cold icy snow until we stumbled upon a beautiful old
church. We played hide and seek,
and then Emily and Genna departed from the group to knock on doors at the
church, do some ‘deanies’ and go all bear grills trying to track us down by
tracing our foot prints. Of course the church trip wasn’t complete without at
last 2 great stacks by both Lindsay and myself down the stairs.
It was soon
becoming dark so we headed back to the main street to catch the next tram back
into the city to then search for somewhere to eat dinner. We stumbled across a
little Irish pub, ‘the Dubliner’ and settled in for warm hearty meals but of
course the pub trip wasn’t complete without a few ciders and reminiscing about
stories from home. After dinner we went in search of another pub, our own
little pub-crawl. However, our pub-crawl wasn’t off to a great start, as of
course we got lost. Anyways we were back on our merry way and managed to go to
2 more pubs before retiring for the hostel. But of course returning to the
hostel wasn’t as straightforward as one would have hoped. In the end I think we
caught 1 tram, 1 bus and walked for a minimum of 6km.
We were
finally back at the hotel and the novelty had just begun because we were
sleeping in BUNK BEDS, wahhooooo. I of course was on the top bunk, Lindsay on
the bottom and Genna on the single bed in the corner. After a few failed
attempts at photographing this significant life event we managed to capture the
perfect shot and headed off to sleep.
The next
morning we all awoke relatively early and headed out for breakfast. After
breakfast we were all incredibly excited as we were partaking in our second ‘touristy’
adventure, the Universeum.
The Universeum is a public fun science centre which
is divided into six sections, containing an exhibit about crime investigation –
Space –
An experiment
department that is mostly about humans and technology-
The Swedish
fish and reptiles-
And a fun
floor with wacky games and science experiments-
Again, the
inner child came out to play.
After a
fun-filled day at the Universeum we were back on a tram into the city to spend
our last few hours in Göteborg exploring
the waterfront and shopping. We were all pooped and it was soon time to board
the 4 hour bus ride home, which I am pretty sure we all slept most of the way.
Anyways that most of the trip in a nutshell and I
hope it provided you all with the slightest bit of entertainment.
Keep posted.
From Sweden with love,
Holly xxx
Remember to send me mail!
Holly Johnstone
Postfack 1822
Ronnblomsgatan 6A
Malmo, Sweden 212 16
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