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| Gothenburg |
Hej (Hello in Swedish) everyone!
We arrived in Gothenburg (Swedish spelling: Göteborg) and had a blast the last two days! We have kept ourselves busy traveling around the city. On Wednesday, we walked around the city of Gothenburg exploring the different shops. Everything here is so expensive! Something that you can buy so cheap at home is like ten times more expensive in Sweden. While shopping and taking pictures just like tourists, many people were walking into us and they did not apologize or saying excuse me! That is something I have noticed that they just keep walking when they run into you. I find it rude, but to them they find it rude when they walk into you and say, “excuse me”. Another thing that I have noticed is when you are eating at a restaurant you do not tip the waiter/waitress! They make enough money waitressing that if you tip them they find it rude. Plus the tip and tax is included in a meal. We figured out that they receive about 25% tip that is already included on in the meal price. I find that extremely crazy because we only give about 10 – 15% tip.
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Comparing the cities of Stockholm and Gothenburg has given us a different perspective on how the people live in Sweden. People in Stockholm seem to be more uptight personalities and the people living in Gothenburg seem to be more laid back. As I said before people in Stockholm wore jeans, a nice shirt, and books. As for the people in Gothenburg, they wore anything, jeans, t-shirts, sweatshirts. I felt like I fit in with the people in Gothenburg rather than the people in Stockholm!
Traveling through Gothenburg, they use a bus, tram, and train services as their primary source of transportation! There are some cars on the road, but not as many cars as you would see in Chicago, Milwaukee, or Los Angeles! All I know is that I have been doing a lot of walking around and getting my exercise in. We walk about 6 – 8 miles a day (maybe even more!) but what is nice is everything is so close in range!
Today, we traveled to Gothenburg archipelago islands! The scenery was so beautiful. We visited just one of the small islands because I had a fun adventure into the North Sea. The island that we went to was Vargö (top pictured right), a small island facing the North Sea. The site was so breathtaking and beautiful. We were walking around the island, climbing the rocks, and I went into the sea. When we were walking along the rocks, I happened to slip on some wet rock and I went into the ocean. It was a pretty funny sight to see! I was lucky enough that I caught myself before being completely submerged into the water. Next time, I will keep a note for myself: when I am out on an adventure, whatever I do, do not get close to the water. I might fall in and get drenched when the water is FREEZING! As I am writing this blog, I still cannot figure out how I accomplished the task of getting wet but I did. It made a great adventure coming back to our hostel. The islands were about an hour away which made it a very cold and wet ride back using the tram. Unfortunately, during this whole process, my camera got wet, so now I am trying to revive it in rice!
After I got warm from my adventure, we went to the train station to get tickets to our last and final stop on our weeklong adventure before we reach Umeå. Tomorrow we are getting up bright and early to take a train to Uppsala. It should be a fun adventure. Uppsala is about 40 minutes north of Stockholm. Look at the map and see if you can identify the places I have been to and will be traveling to!
Here are some words that I have learned in Swedish:
Utgong – enter
Spår – rail
Tåg – train
Tack (sounds like tak) – Thanks
Hej – Hello
Kafé - Café
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