Kok and balls

Published on Thu 13 Aug 2009

Before I describe the events of the first proper day in Gothenburg, here's an "Aren't The Foreigners Funny With Their Funny Words" sign gallery.

Sorry. There's a fire extinguisher outside my room with "skum" written on it too but I can't be bothered to go and photograph it.

Last night, after I had my bath, which was very nice, I discovered a foible of the hotel bathroom design, which is that when you unplug the bath the water pours out of a pipe into a second drain in the middle of the floor.

Which is all well and good in principle (if a bit odd), but the higher pressure of the water coming out of the bath compared to the water in the drain means that the entire bathroom floods for ages, soaking any towels that you may have left on the floor. Specifically, the towel with which I was intending to dry myself. I found another though so it was ok, then I stayed awake later than I meant to watching Swedish telly, which is pretty good - just loads of shows in English with Swedish subtitles. I watched a whole Waking the Dead.

This morning I went for a wander, getting well and truly lost in the process. I think I have my bearings now though. I saw this cool big church

A statue of a naked guy with a fish (turned out to be Poseidon)

and some inflatable white horses.

I'd been meandering in what I considered to be roughly a straight line in the direction of the town centre for about 45 minutes when I arrived back at my hotel (via the Scandinavium, which I thought was going to be a big glass bowl containing vikings, but was actually a hockey stadium).

I was more successful at my second attempt at navigation, and met up with Chris, Gary (who'd both been up since ohshit o'clock) and Janne at the designated place to sit and watch the oppressively attractive Swedish world go by for a bit before going and getting our festival wristbands. On the way there we, oddly considering my funny foreign sign photographing activities that morning, passed an exhibition of photos of funny English signposts. My favourite was the one where they'd translated the word "picnic" into 6 languages, only for it to be pretty much the same in each of them. Here are a few

We also saw this amazing piece of nautical engineering sail by

When we'd got our wristbands (I nearly got knocked out by a revolving door on the way in) the others went to drop stuff off/have a sleep and I went to the sauna and jacuzzi in the hotel. I'm so getting a hot tub - I still feel great for it, a good 10 hours later. I think they put some minerals in the water or something because it was really hard not to float.

The festival we're going to (Way Out West) has a nice format of bands playing in clubs around the city on the Thursday night before the festival and then after the two main days. Tonight we were planning to go and see Blitzen Trapper and two Swedish bands whose names I've forgotten (my vote was for St Vincent, because I'd heard good things about her live, though neither her album or Blitzen Trapper's inspired me with a great deal of confidence to be honest - she's a bit weird and intricate, and the Blitzen Trapper stuff I've heard sounds like a weak imitation of The Band), but the show started later than we thought so we had a round of minigolf (the same course I played this time last year, when it was under an inch of water) to pass some time. It was a competitive match, featuring 2 amazing whole holes in one from Gary, only marred by a disgraceful nudging of my ball by Chris from right next to one of the holes (which was on top of a mound) to a "bunker" (bit of astroturf painted white) a good 10 feet away. Little sod. I managed to hit his ball with my next shot (which *would have* been an easy putt) but it just moved it closer to the hole. Story of my life. I had been leading at that point but the terrible injustice of it all preyed on my mind for the rest of the round and I ended up coming last. One shot behind Chris. Oh the irony. That paragraph reads like I actually really care about minigolf. Nice.

Anyway, by the time we'd finished we'd received word that the queue for the Blitzen Trapper gig contained several times as many people as the venue would hold, so we just went to a bar (which had a weird TV show on with a topless chef who was the spitting image of ex Cambridge United striker Dave Kitson prancing around, flexing his muscles and cooking a steak), sat down, and who should be at the next table but (at least some of) Blitzen Trapper! They spent fully half an hour complaining about their allergies (they all seemed to be gluten intolerant, as is everyone in America I suspect, and the one with the long beard can't eat eggs) and pronouncing Edinburgh wrong. Rock and Roll. I think we'll get to see some music tomorrow...