Friday, August 22, 2014

The Gothenburg Culture Festival

Hej hej!

Last week was the Gothenburg Culture Festival that is a week long event with workshops, museum exhibits, and concerts that are free to all! It started off as a week long drinking festival but in recent years they have added the culture component and made it kid-friendly as well. It was like a fair but without the barn yard animals or the dangerous looking carnival rides.

On Tuesday I went to support my house mom at her Ju-Jitsu group's presentation. After several martial art groups gave a small show, they had a "try-it-yourself" session. What I pictured below was part of their warm up routine.
That night we decided to have festival food for dinner - as posted on my food blog, this is a langos. Deep fried bread with sour cream, onions, and LOTS of cheese. It was really fatty and very filling but quite good.

On Saturday I visited the festival again starting at this cute little chocolate shop at a "Make Your Own Chocolate" workshop. I'm glad I went to this workshop because the shop was in this little plaza that reminded me of Rome (minus the statues).




Step one: Roll the fudge into a ball. I used this muscovado sugar fudge which tasted really yummy.
Step two: Dunk the fudge in chocolate.
Step three: WAIT for the fudge to dry, that's the hardest part.
Step four: Put melted chocolate on the bottom of the chocolate and add toppings. I went with sprinkles, cinnamon, and walnuts.
Step 5: Enjoy! The fudge was amazing because it just melted in your mouth when you took a bite. Very yummy chocolate.








After the chocolate workshop, I really didn't have any plans but just wanted to explore the festival.
To the left is is one of the kids activity/food stations.
Below is the Citroen booth which I learned is a French car company that is quite popular in Europe. The Citroen employee seemed surprised that I didn't know about the brand, but I just googled it, and they do not sell Citroen cars in the states. The car had plastic "air bubbles" on the doors which are supposed to prevent scratching the car in parking lots. In my opinion, it really takes away from the appearance of the car.


This is one of the many "Native Swedish" booths. The dream catchers and music made me think of Native American products back home.






Since there was free entry to some museums, I decided to check them out. I started off at the Röhsska Museet which had 6 rooms that displayed products from the 1800s-2000s in Sweden. It was a really cool exhibit and interesting to move a few decades at a time through history. I noticed that Sweden picked up some of the same "retro" styles we had in the states during the 1900s.

At the top floor of the museum was this metal collection. I thought this child riding a reindeer was really unique but I think they mislabeled this as a "Drinking Cup". I'm not quite sure how you could drink out of that.

I then visited the City Museum of Gothenburg which was really cool. I only had 45 minutes so I missed a lot of the museum, but here are some of the highlights.
This was a "Where are you from" exhibit. Basically, there were about two rooms filled with pictures, videos, and other displays of people describing either their home town or their favorite place. I wish I knew Swedish so that I could have enjoyed the exhibit more!

To the right is the remains of an old Viking ship. They also had really cool exhibits on the Norse Gods so I got to learn about Oden, Thor, and Freyja. I wonder if Norse mythology had as much relationship drama as Greek mythology (I mean Zeus had A LOT of kids).

Below are just a few pictures of this amazing exhibit called "Gothenburg from Above" by Lars Bgydenmark. It was such a cool way to look at the city! The first picture was presented in this dark room so the light from the picture seemed so real. People who can use photography as an effective form of art always impress me, so this exhibit was my favorite.







Lastly, I visited the "All World Market" to grab some dinner. There were about 20-30 booths selling fresh food, packaged food (teas, meats, jams, ect.), plants, and even British tea cup set. I decided to go with this spicy Polish (I believe) sausage which was delicious. Again, the hot dogs here never seem to have a bun big enough to fit the meat. 

I still have a lot of Gothenburg left to explore, but I can't believe I only have two weeks left in Europe. Once I finish exploring the city a bit more, I think I'll be more than ready to go home and back to UCSB!

Bye for now,
Dilpreet 

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