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.