I am being honest when I say I've never seen city quite like Gothenburg. My professor told me it's a city much like Providence, RI, but I've found this to not be true (thank goodness). Gothenburg is much larger and , despite being a city, has a calmer atmosphere than Providence. It's a mix of the modern and the old, like many European cities. It's not a tourist city, like London or Paris or Stockholm. The main attraction of Gothenburg, after asking many locals what we MUST see while we're here, are the islands off of the coast. 

But I like that aspect of the city. Because there aren't all these attractions that loud tourists glued to their cameras flood to, the life in the city is very real and very Swedish. 

 The population is a little over 500,000 people and it is the second largest city in Sweden (after Stockholm of course). It was once a fortress city and was taken a few times by the Danish a long time ago. For the longest time, fishing was the biggest industry here. After all, this is the city where some have pickled herring or caviar from a tube on their crisp bread for breakfast. Seafood is adored here as much as Ikea and Astrid Lindgrens (author of Pippi Longstocking). According to a Swedish professor, if you insult Astrid Lindgrens to a Swede, it's like insulting their own mother.

Though I'll create another post completely devoted to the cuisine of Sweden, I want to include a place we visited that is very important to the Swedish. It is the Feskekôrka, or "Fish Church", where hordes of hundreds of varieties of the freshest seafood can be purchased.

The Feskekôrka

During the industrial revolution, the city became a place of factories and industries. Some of the businesses that came out of this is the famous Volvo company and SKF, a ball bearing factory.

The modern part of the city is where the IHM Business School and many businesses are located. The area includes soccer stadiums, movie theaters, exhibition centers and more. 

 The Haga district belongs to the old part of Gothenburg and the architecture is quintessentially 19th century European. The area is flooded with cafes. Cafes are adored in Gothenburg. Due to the high student population and "fika" (a Swedish term for a short coffee or smoking break taken twice a day, usually at mid morning and mid afternoon), cafes can be found everywhere and everyone has their own personal favorite. My roommate and I stumbled upon the Cafe Vasanova and because of our distaste for coffee, ordered some desserts.

 Gothenburg is a horrible city to be a coffee hater. With cafes and fikas and mornings spent dead to the world and complimentary coffee at many restaurants, I am missing out. My version of a digestible coffee couldn't really be classified as "coffee" but more like sugary milk with a coffee flavoring. Not worth it.

Having been here less than a week, I still have much of the city to explore, so expect to see a lot more of my findings!