Home » China » Greeting Götheborg

I must admit that the location is a bit of a lie - I've been home for more than a week already. But sitting at home in my apartment that I share with my very good friend Johanna after a long day of school and work I just felt I wanted to do something else. Something that isn't sleeping, reading the very interesting but quite massive books for my class or just mindlessly surfing the internet. That's what I do these days instead of flipping through TV-channels (we've both decided against television). Both activities are quite equal in meaninglessness...

Greeting Götheborg

Elin Thyr
2006-10-05 21:24:15

Displayed times (last time: )

the dock. There was a whole group of authorative-looking policemen by the gate refusing anyone without a fancy invitation to go in. Of course the sky decided to open itself as we stood there getting angry at the guards and we experienced the worst thunder shower during our whole stay. Or at least so it felt... We stood outside together with a few other Swedes, among them the parents of a friend of ours on the ship, and heard her shooting the salute cannon shots, seeing her masts as she made her way in and feeling very depressed. At last some guy (obviously higher in the hierarchy than the guards...) told us just to go in. "For your sincerity" he said, "because you waited so long..."

When we'd finally made our way into the main harbour area and headed for the terminal building the next barricade came. Invitations? No invitations, no entrance. Now we were really starting to get pissed off. But luckily for us someone else tried to get in through another entrance and all the guards that manically were guarding our entrance ran off. So we sneaked in hoping noone would grab our shoulders and throw us out of there...

Finally we were in! As the Swedish princess said some nice words about sister cities and future relations we hugged Johannes, Helena, Henning, Andreas and also, quite surprisingly one or two old crushes or so... Being exhausted from the plight of getting in that we never could have foreseen and also from the heat (it's never nice when the wind is no longer cooling but feels like a hair dryer) we made plans for the night and went home to our sweet hotel room with sweet Air Condition.

We had a great time in Shanghai with visits to beautiful gardens, a temple, the museum of public security (believe it or not...), the aquarium (big mistake - noisy children with noisy parents in an even noiser museum), a night of karaoke, lots of nice meals, lots of terrible meals, lots of nights of cool, mysterious, flaming bars, nights with our ship crew friends, visits to markets, drinking classic tea, adventures in trying to get the taxi drivers to understand where we were going... We quickly learned that the only way was to ask the hotel staff to write down where we wanted to go in Chinese. And the city map with street names in both pin yin and Chinese proved to be well invested.

I think I'll end this to say that it was lovely to get home to a quiet and calm Göteborg and my own bed... Here life has turned to normal very quickly and I've geared into a new fase. I've started a basic course in development studies which up to now has been very interesting. Along side it I'm still working in the little Greek restaurant
which - I have to brag a bit - last weekend got a very good review in the newspaper.

We'll see when the next travelling frenzy grabs me... Until then, stay happy and keep exploring!