Saturday, we decided to take a walking tour in the middle of Gothenburg. We first had some lasagna for lunch at Café Opera. Café Opera is located on a street called Linnégatan which is popular for restaurants and bars. We wanted to hit a place called Texas Longhorn (sound familiar), but it and most of the restaurants were not open until 1PM. I was surprised that very few restaurants were not open at noon for lunch! They work crazy hours here…much worse than the shops in northwest Arkansas.

Along our walk, the only thing worth mentioning is a place called Annedal. Annedal is an old working-class district that was built in the 1870s. It was considered a highly elite area for Gothenburg’s working class people. It is basically one main street that still has a row of two story red brick houses from the elite neighborhood. You could definitely tell the unique area based on the other buildings near by. Also, there is a small museum located on the property, but it was only open on Sunday afternoons.

We went to a soccer game Saturday evening! The Ullevi stadium where all the soccer games are held is only minutes from our apartment. Did I mention before that our apartment is in a perfect location? A match between IFK Göteborg (which is my favorite team here in Sweden!) and IFK Norrköping was held at 4PM. I have actually seen IFK Göteborg play many times during previous trips to Gothenburg and Chad has seen them play once before as well. So, we have grown quite fond of this team. The games are quite exciting. There is usually an entire section in the stadium fenced off for the “ultimate” fans that stand and yell for their team the entire game. The cheers are to common tunes, but of course the cheers are in Swedish! There was even one cheer where everyone held up one of their shoes! It was almost more exciting to watch the fans than the game. The game was great though, Göteborg won 4-0!

Sunday, we headed up to Lake Hornborga about an hour north near a small town called Skara. Lake Hornborga is known for the tens thousand or more cranes that visit yearly during March and April. It is a wetland made up mainly marshy/swampy areas which is why all the birds are attracted to the lake. I have never seen so many cranes. Approximately 8000 cranes were there during our visit, but just over a week ago, there were more than 15,000. You can check out the crane statistics here. The cranes normally start appearing at the beginning of March, and by the end of March (or beginning of April) the large flocks arrive. All of the cranes were returning after a winter in Spain! Toward the end of April, the cranes continue to migrate north. It was very nice to just hang out and watch all of the birds. I also learned later that there were 31 different species of birds seen that day.

Overall, a very relaxing weekend in Gothenburg!

Rhonda

Check out all of Chad’s photos from the weekend below.

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