Sunday, 18 April 2010 11:43 Last Updated on Wednesday, 19 May 2010 10:22 Written by Claudine du Plessis

After having a nice breakfast of bacon and eggs and listening to Tune's amazing piano performance, we left Denmark for Sweden. The Öresund Bridge is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe and connects Copenhagen to the Swedish  city of Malmö.  First you drive for about 8km on the bridge with a view of hundreds of wind turbines built in the ocean. Then you reach the artificial island of Peberholm and from there the road disappears in a 4km long tunnel underneath the ocean towards Sweden.

From here the weather started getting colder and windier. We stopped in the coastal town of Angelholm to draw some Swedish Kroner, fill up our tank and warm ourselves with a McDonald's coffee (all we could afford at R15 a coffee).

As we entered Gothenburg, the weather got really windy and unpleasant. It felt as if we would be blown over. Also, Billy started to notice that the bike's steering felt a little bit loose, but we weren't sure if it was the wind that made it feel that way. We misspelled our host in Gothenburg's address in the GPS, so we first visited the city's huge port and industrial area, which mainly consists of oil refineries and the Volvo factory (Volvo was founded in Gothenburg). We realised our mistake and got to Pierre, our host's place at 1 in the afternoon.



Pierre is a very friendly guy and made us feel welcome instantly. He is a Java developer and computer geek. His flat is dominated by his Playstation, big screen and Rockstar instruments.  He invited us to join him for his friend's housewarming party that night. Pierre also sings in a gospel chior. At the party we met his friends, strangely enough, the hostess' dad was South African and she had been to South Africa. Also, another couple that was there, had cycled from Cape Town to Ethiopia and we had some interesting conversations. Another topic of conversation was the Gothenburg half-marathon, for which a lot of people were training for, including Pierre. At 3am we took the last tram home and were surprised to see how many other young people were doing the same (a lot of them in a very drunken state).

The next morning we woke up late and had breakfast of bread, cereal and other stuff. The people here eat kaviar in a tube! It's one of the cheapest spreads you can buy and taste like fish paste. We met Pierre's friend and then took the tram for sightseeing around Gothenburg. They showed us everything, we walked through the main streets and over the bridge (which was again VERY windy). Pierre showed us a cathedral and told us that he sang there in his chior at the wedding of Bill Gate' and that he saw the man himself there. Luckily Bill didn't notice Pierre's Linux penguin necklace.

Pierre and his friend also took us up the hill to a water tower, where hidden up in the tower, there is a small restaurant with a beautiful view of the whole of Gothenburg. It was a little bit embarrassing, because we were not able to afford anything in there (a small sandwich cost R50), so me and Billy only had cokes (at R20!). Afterwards, we went to the park where we met another friend of Pierre's. In the park they had some animal enclosures and they had an elk, a real funny animal that made a very strange moaning sound. We also walked up to a fort.



Later, we bought groceries and made a typical Swedish meal of meatballs, mashed potatoes and berry chutney. Then we played Rock Band.

Tags
Biking  Cape 2 Cape  Sweden