The penultimate trip - Gothenburg/Helsingborg/Helsingor

One day, while trying to work on our theses, we got distracted and decided that we would take a final trip to Sweden and so we booked out bus tickets and accomodation to Gothenburg on-line.

A few days later, again distracted from our work, we decided "Why stop at Gothenburg? Why not keep going?". And so we bought return bus tickets from Gothenburg to Helsingborg, Sweden.

As it turns out, we didn't even stop in Helsingborg, but managed to visit Helsingor in Denmark as well. All this in three days. It was good.

Gothenburg is the 2nd largest city in Sweden and is less than 4 hours by bus from Oslo. It has the busiest port in Scandinavia. Its supposed to be the city which most Swedish would prefer to live in. If you're in your late 20s or early 30s you may be interested to note that Gothenburg is the city that gave the world "Ace of Base". There was a statue in Gothenburg called "Johanna". That isn't its real name but apparently thats what people called because it was unveiled on Johanna's day. Apparently Swedish have "name" days.

We next visited Helsingborg which is about a 2+ hour bus ride away from Gothenburg. A Swedish friend of mine could not understand why we wanted to go there and knew it as the place where you take the ferry to Copenhagen from.

We of course HAD to go to Helsingborg because that was home to the castle KARNAN (the keep). Yes, there is a castle in Sweden called Karnan. As it turned out Helsingborg was the nicest part of the trip. The town had a lot of character and the people there seemed to be very proud of their history and sights. To our surprise there was also a little beach with small palm trees right next to the ferry terminal.

Helsingborg is just a 20 minute ferry ride away from Helsingor, Denmark - best known as the home of Hamlet's castle. We visited the castle and walked through the casements (basement) where I presume many, many people have been locked away. The castle was quite beautiful and it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


All in all, the trip to Sweden/Denmark was really fun. Once again we were reminded of the stark contrast between Swedish and Norwegians (or at least the people in Oslo). For example the Swedish really seem to enjoy eating huge but inexpensive set lunches at restaurants. The Norwegians on the other hand eat quick lunches consisting mainly of bread and cheese which they bring from home wrapped in paper. Most Swedish and other foreigners I've met never fail to make fun of the Norwegian eating habits.

Its interesting to have been able to learn over the course of the year the differences between the different Scandinavians. When we first got here, we didn't even know what Norwegian sounded like. We'll be off in less than two weeks.

Dinner Party

Last Thursday night, Bjorg and I finally got down to having our chinese and korean friends over for dinner.

We have been very bored over the last week and needed something to look forward too. Also since we're leaving pretty soon we figured that we might as well try to finish as much of the spices that we had.

There were eight of us in all and it was the first time we were preparing so much food. We have had that many people over for dinner before back home but that only involved cooking simple things like spaghetti and making salad.

This time we wanted to bring our guests the complete taste of home (or as much of it as possible). So this is what the menu was like:

1. Prawn Crackers & Thai Chilli Sauce
2. Bak Kut Teh
3. Beef Rendang
4. Green Vegetables in Oyster Sauce
5. Mee Goreng
6. White Rice
7. Cereal Prawn
8. Raita
9. Grass Jelly with Longan and Sea Coconut for desert

Much to our surprise the food turned out pretty well and our guests were very happy. We could tell that they were not just being polite. I would say that the only "problem" we had was with recreating an authentic tasting mee goreng. I think we managed fairly well to recreate a dish that looked like mee goreng but we're not too sure about the taste.

Although the plan was to try to cook food that our guests would never have tasted before (so they wouldn't be able to tell if it was authentic or not), the chinese recognized some of the dishes. To our relief, they really liked it.

Apart from the food, the evening went well and we all had a good time.

Unfortunately, we have no pictures of the dinner party. Wasn't thinking too clearly after all the cooking.