Haj from Sweden! Actually for some reason they normally say it twice, quickly, sounding like 'Hai Hai'.
'Yu-te-bori' is about the same size as Edinburgh, and is the largest university city in Scandinavia with over 60,000 students. Like Edinburgh it's very easy to walk around, and the very long and very straight roads and walkways here make it quite hard to get lost. But Edinburgh, there's not many cars here, but there are trams and bicycles all over the place.
With a history of building ships and Volvos (and also Hasselblad cameras), Göteborg's got a working class background, but now seems to have become quite a hip and trendy chilled out sort of place.
And it's very friendly here too - I took a great fifty minute tourist boat trip around the canals and out into the harbour with the shipbuilding cranes all over the place. Because of a high spring tide, we had to get off our seats and duck down very low to avoid being decapitated by some of the bridges, and one was too low for us to get through at all.
With around sixty other blatant tourists onboard, we passed parks and squares and were cheerfully waved at by people of all ages, which surprised me. But even more surprising was the fact that both goths and heavy metallers were also smiling and waving. Surely at least the goths should be no more than morbidly pensive at their most enthusiastic!
Among many interesting facts about the city, our guide told us that the Swedish, even with their relatively small population, consume more bananas than any other European country. She described this (and many other things) as 'quite extraordinary'.
The friendliness also seems to extend to the pubs (beer is still expensive in Sweden, but not as bad as in Norway), which were showing Sweden playing Denmark in the World Cup qualifier. The guy standing just in front of me told me to hit him hard if he got in the way of my view. He even demonstrated how hard I should hit him, then tried to get me to test the system out by carefully putting his arm between me and one of the pub's screens.
Anyway, the city is one of only two in the world to boast a floating multi-story car park. And apparently it's for sale. Dunno if shipping is included in the price though.
I thought there was a code by which you can work out the fate of people depicted in statues, based on the number of raised hooves shown on the horse. Which would mean that this guy was wounded in battle. But alas, it seems that it's the stuff of urban legends. So I don't know what happened to him.
Rather than try to work out what these things on the menu were, I went for potluck and tried to pronounce 'Bratwurst Thuringer', leaving out the 'Supergod' bit. And it was a good choice...
... with really good mashed potatoes.
