Since the Gothenburg City Airport is anything but (it's at least 30 minutes outside), he gave me a ride to my hotel. That was my first encounter with Swedish hospitality. In fact, the Swedes are very nice. As I noted in the previous entry, I am visiting an old college friend, who, upon my arrival, had me over to his childhood home where his father was preparing a large dinner to entertain a number of guests.
The second largest city in Sweden (of course, behind Stockholm), it is the again like many of the second largest cities in European countries as it is arguably the cultural hub. Perhaps a working theory might be that larger metropolitan cities always contain the government of the country and become more administrative than cultural. But this is merely a theory and unproven.
Walking around, I was first delighted to see the namesake of my college, Gustaf II Adolf (Latinized, Gustavus Adolphus), who is heralded as one of the cultural proponents of the country during his reign in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Known as the "Lion of the North," his presence in the Thirty Years Wars is purported to have shifted the balance and won the war for the Protestants. He was killed in action, however, at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. But his copper image survives today in many parts of Sweden, but I am particularly attracted to this one:
And Sweden charges on. Many of the cityscapes in Gotheburg are reminiscent of a New York avenue. It's really quite pretty:
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