Day 6 - Sept. 7th

Therry and I weren't sure what we wanted to do, but we had another day of the rental car, so figured we'd make use of it somehow.  We mulled around and had coffee.

The essence of energy

I didn't have anything in particular I wanted to see, but I did kind of have an itch to play some more disc golf.  I floated the idea by Therry, and she didn't need much prodding.  We decided to check out the other course that was nearby, Slottsskogen.  The course was in a city park of the same name, which was huge, about 340 acres and the disc golf course was but a small portion of it.  And like other big city parks, like Central, Stanley, Golden Gate, etc., it was definitely a popular place to be on a Sunday.

We got to the park easily with the SatNav, but the one parking lot we tried was chaotic--like a shopping mall on Christmas Eve.  We got out of there as quickly as we could and drove around the perimeter of the park and eventually found street parking.  We couldn't really understand what the parking rules were, they seemed to differ from block to block, and saw that someone in front of us had been ticketed.  We just fed the meter for 3 hours and hoped for the best.

We had a bit of a walk to get to the course, probably the better part of a mile.  Of course, when we got there, I saw that there was a huge parking lot a couple hundred meters from where the course was.  Oh well.  This course, like Järva was pay to play, but unlike Järva, it was busy and the pro shop (or booth, in this case) was occupied, It was 35 SEK, which is $5 more or less. Usually, if a course is pay to play, I expect it to be a pretty special experience.  This was a special experience for us, of course, but objectively speaking, the course wasn't all that and a bag of potato chips.

It was fun, and had good natural terrain to work with, but the holes were all pretty short, close together, and it was crowded. And naturally, it had a pretty worn in feel to it. But, it was still indeed fun.

The basket is up over that hill somewhere.

More or less in that direction

Why not?

Being that it was the first crowded course we'd experienced, it was fitting that we got to see our first Swedish disc golf douchery.  Our first encounter was a guy unloading his bag on one of the few open holes.  He was about halfway through his bag when we approached the tee, he looked over at us, and continued to throw disc after disc at the basket.  To his credit, he did wave us through when he was walking around trying to find all his discs.  I felt a little smug as I parked the hole with my first (and only!) shot.

Then a few holes later, we encountered what I could only surmise as the "local pros."  Unlike most Swedish disc golfers I'd seen, these guys had full on backpack bags with 20+ discs, and they walked around like they owned the place.  They were obviously playing some sort of safari (made up) layout, and took their time playing through the middle of a couple other fairways.  One of the dudes just stood in the middle of the fairway and carried on a conversation while people on multiple holes just waited on him.  He was either oblivious or just didn't give a shit.  I'm betting on the latter. We ended up playing behind them for much of the round, and had to wait on them taking multiple shots more than a few times.  Douches.  But, we've certainly got them in the states too.

Should've taken more pictures, but at least I remembered on the 18th hole.

We finished the round, and could have played more, but the skies were looking progressively ominous, and we were concerned about the parking situation.  Before we left though, we had to check out this big hill next to the course.  It looked like there was a ski jump there.

Is that...?

Sure looks like it...

Yup, I do believe they've got a ski jump in this here park

It was indeed a ski jump.  A little research uncovered that it's over 100 years old, and no longer used for ski jumping (obviously).  People do apparently still sled down it though.  Props to them, is all I can say.

A better sense of proportion

I feel I look exceptionally Nordic here

We made our way back to the car following some of the inner trails of the park, and were relieved to see that there was no ticket waiting for us.  We got in the car and headed towards downtown Gothenburg to explore.  There was an area that was supposed to be the kind of grungy-bohemian part of town, where I guess the hipsters and artists hang out.  We drove through there, but didn't see the galleries and sex shops like we had read about.  It seemed to be popular no doubt, and kind of trendy, but it didn't strike me as all that remarkable.

 As we were driving around, we were sampling the big bag of candy we'd bought the night before.  The Ika had a huge bulk candy section, and we'd taken samples of the European candy we weren't familiar with, and what looked good.  There was a good amount of licorice in there, and that was pretty good, as well as the Haribo of course.  But one thing that we got--I don't know what it was supposed to be--but it tasted like cat litter.  Used cat litter.  It was extremely tart and had an ammonia overtone to it.  It was nassssssssty.  But, what can you expect from a culture that eats fermented fish?

This is known as the lipstick building.  Can't figure that one out.

As you can see in the pictures, the weather wasn't great this day.   It was the first day of our trip that wasn't filled with sunshine, and soon enough it started raining.  One of the sights Therry read about in her guidebook was a water tower that you could go up in and have a great view of the city.  Granted it wasn't the best day for scenery, but it was actually something in Sweden that was free.  That in itself was worth a gander.

We took a winding road to the top of a hill and found the tower awaiting us.  In a kind of surreal experience, you could just drive around underneath the tower and park wherever you deemed it proper.

Apparently, water towers are a part of civic pride in Gothenburg, and they have a bunch of them, each uniquely designed.

Ours is on the upper right

  There's a cafe at the top of the tower as well, and it seemed to be doing a good amount of business.  We were just there for the view though, so stepped outside into the elements.

With a better camera and better conditions, you could see the other water towers

And Gothenburg for that matter

We decided to take the elevator back down for shits and giggles.  Little did we know that the elevator was a concept model for the Coffin of Doom®.

I wasn't claustrophobic beforehand. 

We headed back to the house from there, and mostly had a lazy night in, eating ad hoc meatballs, and watching Swedish TV (mostly American TV with subtitles).  We got our train tickets to Copenhagen and finished off our ice cream cake.

Day 5 - Sep. 6th.

Unsurprisingly, after our long day of driving, we both slept in hard the next morning, and were quite leisurely around the house.  We didn't have any particular plans, we'd gotten to Gothenburg, that was pretty much the main goal.  You mean we were supposed to do something once we got here?

It looked to be a nice day, so I looked at what disc golf courses might be near by, and it looked like there were a couple well rated courses within 10 miles of us.  Therry agreed that a round sounded like a good idea as any, and we were soon on our way out to Skatås 

We were quite fortunate to have discovered the SatNav in our little Clio. It's not to say that we never would have found the place, but it's a certainty that it would have taken us far longer to get to it.  After about 20 minutes of convoluted driving, we arrived at Skatås Sports Complex.

The complex was interesting, it was basically a huge park that was intended for all sorts of activities--jogging, soccer fields, mountain biking, some rock climbing, I think, and of course, disc golf.  There were also lots of cabin type buildings, making it feel like we were stomping around a big summer camp.  We were fuzzy on where the course actually started, but found our way to a fairway, hole 3 as it turned out.  We got to the tee just as a family with too many kids was finishing up the previous hole.  Without much delay, we threw our drives, eager to get underway

The course seemed nice, a lot closer to what we'd consider "normal" compared to the immaculate presentation of Järva.  It was certainly more rugged and woodsy, but I was afraid that it was going to be too easy.  The first holes started off pretty basic, even though they were in the woods.  As the course progressed though, it got more challenging, all par 3s, but you had to work for them.

That little yellow dot perched on the hillside, that's what we're going for.

The only real major complaint I had about the course was the lack of signage.  We were able to find our way around for most of the holes, but it got confusing in a couple places.  The park actually had two courses installed, the regular 18 and a 9 hole beginner course.  Through some sort of misguided planning, the 18 hole course overlapped the 9 hole course, so at 16's teepad, we saw about 5 different baskets we could feasibly shoot at.

If you look closely, you can see at least 3 baskets here

We found the right basket, but with no indication of where to go afterward, we spent a good 20 minutes searching around for the next hole.  When we finally found it, a group of beginner level guys caught up to us.  Not wanting to be rude on foreign turf, we let them play through--a decision we regretted as soon as we saw their shots spraying in every direction except towards the target.  While we were waiting for them to finish the hole, another group caught up.  Our manners only went so far, and we went ahead and teed off as soon as the first group was out of the way.

We played through the hole quickly, and the group was still teeing off when we got to 18.  They offered to let us play through with them, and we accepted.  At least I assume that's what they said, it was all in Swedish. I asked where we were aiming, and they pointed me in the right direction. I'm pleased to say that I think I represented 'Murica well, and ripped off a pretty good drive that flew straight and true and landed pin high.  There was kind of a moment of silence and one guy quietly said "Snygg."  Therry informed me that means "very good."  We let them finish off the hole before we played our shots, which meant they didn't see my missed birdie putt.

We found our way back to the parking lot and subsequently, the beginning of the course, complete with a useful map.

We played the first two holes and I managed to birdie both of them, which ended the round on a high note.  We would liked to have played the little 9 hole course, but we'd paid for parking and we were drawing close to our limit.  Plus, we were hungry.

One of Therry's colleagues had told her about the archipelago off Gothenburg's coast, and that the ferries to get there were free.  "Swedish" and "free" aren't two words you normally see in a sentence together, at least economically speaking.  So naturally, we had to take advantage of this phenomenon--we could at least get a small taste of socialism.  Thanks to the SatNav, we were once again able to get there without much issue.  After a short wait, we were on the ferry and on our way.

We had a couple choices of what ferry to get on, and we picked one at random.  It turned out that the island we got dropped off on was connected to several others via bridges, so we just kind of toodled around the islands and explored.  They were reminiscent of the San Juan Islands here in Washington, being kind of laid back and slower paced than life on the mainland.  These felt more like a community rather than a tourist destination though.

I meant to mention it earlier, but through our trip, we'd learned that the staple food of Sweden was pizza.  Whereas in America, your generic restaurant will serve burgers of some sort, here, it was pizza.  We drove around the islands, which were mostly residential, but of the few restaurants we found, almost all of them advertised pizza.  We were hungry, so decided on one that looked good enough.

We walked in and were the only customers.  The hostess began running down the menu for us, in Swedish, and we nodded along dumbly.  Therry stopped her at one point and asked if she spoke English.  She did, not fluently, but well enough.  She told us the pizzas were personal sized, and several of them sounded interesting.  We decided on a gyro and a chicken curry pizza, and I went ahead and ordered a beer.  Therry asked for water, but they only had it for sale (Sweden != free), so she got a Coke. The cafe had a nice deck and it was a beautiful day, so we sat outside and looked at boats while we waited for our food.

The beer was good, not great, but good.  It tasted like your standard German lager, i.e. Spaten.  It went down easy in the sunshine though.  We waited for a while, I was trying to sip at my beer so I'd still have some when our food came.  Another couple patrons had come in a few minutes after us, and we were a bit miffed when they got their food before us.  The hostess came and apologized profusely--apparently the cook had forgotten to make our pizzas. (????)  We didn't really understand, having previously been the only customers in the place, I can't imagine he had a line of orders to fill.  But there wasn't much we could do about it, it's not like anything was going to be coming out of her tip.  Eventually though, the pizza did arrive.

They were bigger than we'd been led to believe, we probably could have split one and been satiated at least.  We split them in half and shared so we could both have a taste of each.  They were pretty good, although a little light on the seasoning.  And the gyro pizza had so much sauce on it, it kind of obscured the flavor of the pizza itself.  Still, we were hungry, and they were pretty good.

Therry had been planning to treat me to lunch/dinner, but when we went to pay, the hostess informed us that they didn't accept cash.  After our experience at the gas pumps and now the cafe, it was apparent that cash is NOT king in Sweden.  Therry only had cash on her, and since I had my wallet on me, I went ahead and paid for it.  I think the total came to something like $60.  Sigh.

We had some time to kill before getting back on the ferry, so we explored around the islands some more.

This church was at the highest point of the island, we just had to seek it out.

Another one of those mysterious silo-things.

 When we had about 20 minutes before the ferry was to depart, we headed to the dock.  We were on the skinny side roads that would be hard pressed to accommodate two cars, even Clio sized ones.  One one of the side roads, we encountered a speed checker (comically "farthinder" in Swedish).  Some farthinders are as simple as speed bumps.  This one, however was a severe trough through the road, as if it were just cut off with a 3 foot drop and a 5 foot gap to the other side.  There were two "bridges" for tires to ride across, they were spaced kind of wide apart.  And our car was quite narrow.  So there wasn't a whole lot of room for error, if one tire missed, our car would be well and truly stuck, and likely damaged (and that would be a Swedish tow and repair bill).  It was very reminiscent of the leap of faith scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Needless to say, it was a serious pucker moment, but we made it across without issue, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief as our sphincters unclenched.

Subsequent research has revealed that the traffic device was not for speed control, but rather, for keeping cars from using bus-only lanes.  The structure is called a "bus trap," which is sort of a misnomer, because it actually traps cars.  The gap is supposed to be narrow enough for buses, but too wide for normal cars, certainly more than too wide for the likes of a Renault Clio.  Through a Google image search, I wasn't able to find any examples of a trap quite as severe as the one we crossed, but undoubtedly, we shouldn't have been able to cross it.  Obviously, we had no idea we were on a bus-only road, but I have to admit I'm a little pleased with myself knowing that I managed to circumvent a trap designed specifically to stop me from doing exactly what I did.  If I ever encounter another one though, I can't say I'll be eager to tempt fate again.

We were only a couple hundred meters from the ferry terminal after making across the bus trap, and had about 10 minutes to spare.  Unlike our Washington ferries where they hold everyone in a staging area and then board en masse, here cars would just board as they came.  The ferry was already pretty full, and we followed two cars onto the ferry.  Once they got on, we saw that there was literally one spot left.  We pulled onto the boat, and the gate immediately closed behind us.  Having no reason to stick around, the ferry left the dock early, and we marked that sequence of events as being more than a little fortunate.

By the time we were getting back to Magnus' place, it was dark.  We stopped at an "IKA Maxi" on the way back for supplies.  IKA is the main grocery chain in Sweden, and the Maxi is their big one--similar to Fred Meyer here in the Pacific Northwest, similar to a Super Walmart in other areas, though a couple notches up in terms of quality.  We did some shopping and hauled out two full grocery bags, which cost less than our pizza dinner.

I wonder what it tastes like?  Ketchup and freedom, I bet.

Once back at Magnus', we made some drinks and watched Last Crusade (yes, we'd experienced a bit of foreshadowing), ate ice cream, and called it a night.