My European home town used to be centered around the river, where sea transport, shipbuilding, government, university, and trade were the more important parts, while now shipbuilding is just an academic subject, and all things Volvo has taken over (bank, IT center, global headquarters, and car and truck manufacture, a big port for the transport of those vehicles, and so on).
For a photographer, the entertainment business used to be great, while the big parks, arboretum, and botanical garden also was a great attraction (for the botanically interested world class, as some species are only found here, outside China). The big archipelago just a short trip away is another source of photographic opportunities, with its connection to the fishing and naval marine history (not much left of either, although hundreds are still employed in such activities.
Said to be a friendly city, and in many ways, it is, where people have intermixed since humans arrived to occupy the big river and its banks. Traders came from the inland with furs and ship-building materials, and the fishermen came with their specialties and the government taxed this trade, and controlled its inhabitants, and kept the foe away (who could pass the city unhindered if they followed one road, and one road only, to get from their possessions south and north of my city.
The British arrived in force about 250 years ago and introduced modern shipbuilding, trams (originally horse-drawn), and trade with the British empire, all the way to Hong Kong flourished. And the fishermen traveled from my town to Aberdeen each week, fishing on the way there and back again, and almost all fishing vessels were built in the UK. Till modern times three ferry lines plied back and forth between my town and the UK, some of them even sailing up the Thames into London itself. Now they are all gone.
Since fairly recently the town is full of new immigrants, where speaking Arabic is helpful, but also Mandarin, as much of Volvo now is owned by the Chinese, and the drug barons rule the suburbs here, as in many other parts of my country.
The buildings of interest are mostly from the 18th century, where much of the older city was replaced, and then the city expanded and low-cost housing popped up all over the city perimeter, and when I was young those buildings were torn down and replaced by new housing made of brick and concrete, replacing the old brick-and-wood houses, unique to our city.
Lately, it has become a tourist's mecca, not least visited by Europeans and Americans, and the Chinese. Volvo has attracted thousands of Chinese, and many rich Chinese visit our famous camera factory, which started as an importer of Kodak cameras, approximately a hundred years ago, Mr. Eastman and the company owner being good friends.
The city's very old military bastions still stand, with their cannons aimed just as much at the citizens of my city as at the now distant foe, after half of that empire became independent, and other parts were taken by the foe's southern neighbor, ages ago, and even longer ago my country took all the foe's possessions on this side of the sound.
But you are now hard-pressed to find any military in town; the air force left over 50 years ago, the naval units are still here, but hard to find. The City Airport (the former AFB) is closed down, only allowing helicopters and training aircraft to use the runways.
The capital is much more influenced by the French than we are on the West Coast, so much so that the court spoke French long before we got a Frenchman as our king! In medieval times Germans ruled the seas around here (and the capital), so that was a language often used, and had a great influence on our language even today, while now English is the lingua franca! In Viking times, when most of the trade was turned to the East you probably would hear Finnish, Estonian, Russian, and Turkish spoken in the capital, as you indeed can today!
Our technical university is called Chalmers after its founder, a Scottish immigrant, a trader, while the central hospital Sahlgrenska is named after a Swedish merchantman (who got rich by trading with China, doing a little slave trade as well on the way out), who helped to finance the original hospital. The major shipyard was founded by Keillor, another Scotsman, and so on.
So British names still abound (like Hamilton and Montgomery), and an entire suburb was once exclusively British and connected with the city center via the town's only tram line, which was run by the Gothenburg Tramway Company (that was its name, although nowadays it has a Swedish name, and is no longer a private company (but might well return to private ownership soon, not least to Covid making it cheap to buy).
Being isolated, more or less, at home (I belong to those that would I catch the Covid I has a small chance in surviving, due to age and ailments, like allergy and heart problems), I mainly shoot birds on the balcony, as the risk of catching the Covid is very real here, and the Botanical Garden is not that much fun this time of the year, the downtown restaurants and shops mostly empty of folks, and the coastline windy and cold (the weather is not that unlike Seattle's).
In short, Gothenburg (Göteborg) is a great city, with an easily accessible archipelago, friendly people, and a lot of rain and wind! And, aye, most of the women are blondes, although the immigrants are mostly black-haired. A curious fact is that in Viking times most Swedes were black-haired, while people in northern Italy mostly were blondes in those days. One theory is that the blond 'blood' came from Russia, but I have not seen anything substantiating that idea!
Over and out,
Tord, nowadays mostly a Nikon user, but I still got my K-x!
---------- Post added 12-03-20 at 07:42 AM ----------
Been over 50 years since I visited Algonquin!
I was there in '67, the Bicentennial Year!
Tord
