This quirky little thing is a crucifixion in a bottle, but with some dice added to the whole arrangement. The museum notes that it was made in around 1860 by the sailor Edvind Johansson who came from Skepplanda, a little to the north of Gothenburg.
I thought that the dice were some nod towards life being something of a game of chance, but this has shown my lack of knowledge of the Bible. Instead, Roman soldiers threw dice for the clothes of Jesus after crucifying him. These are also known as a ‘God in a bottle’ and were created by sailors, soldiers, prisoners and indeed anyone else who likely had quite a lot of spare time available.
Inside are also hammer and tongs, representing when the Romans nailed Jesus to the cross, and when he was taken back down again. I’m not sure that I’m inspired enough to go and build my own shrine in a bottle, nor indeed are my DIY skills sufficiently good enough to do so (and nor do I have the patience of a saint to fit this arrangement together), but it’s a rather lovely little survival.
I thought that it would be a marvellous idea to stay on a boat when Richard and I went to Gothenburg. I wasn’t sure if he’d like the idea, but it transpired that he did, which is handy as I had already booked my room. This is the centrally located Good Morning hotel which is moored up on the river Göta, which is what the city is named after.
The room was sufficiently spacious and I had a view over the water. The window stayed open via some complex mechanism and that allowed the river air to get in which was rather pleasant. There were no noise issues either internally or externally, so that was suitably peaceful. One thing that I had expected was at least a little movement of the boat in the water, but there was none. If I hadn’t actually walked over a little gangway to get on board, I wouldn’t have realised that this was a hotel on a boat.
I did meander down the corridor to check that Richard’s room wasn’t any better than mine and I’m pleased to say that it wasn’t. Not that I’m petty or anything.
I think I should mention breakfast. I liked breakfast. Here’s the bread selection and Richard was very excited that they had some caramel bread or something niche.
I wasn’t really listening to Richard’s bread story as there was bacon. Now, I don’t normally bother with the hot food at breakfast as I like bread, cheeses, deli meats, tomatoes and all that stuff. I don’t usually have bacon as I like it burnt with no fatty bits and that’s not being picky, I just like things done well. Literally.
On the first morning I had a little bacon with my healthy green beans and tomatoes.
And then I got the same again, before dispensing with the tomatoes and green beans and just getting bacon. Look at that, cooked perfectly. I thought Richard’s “I think you’ve consumed a pig over the weekend” on the third morning was a little excessive, but the bacon was delicious.
The view out of the window at breakfast which was all rather pleasant.
And we popped to the bar for an evening drink and if you look closely you can see Richard and I eagerly awaiting the appearance of a staff member. There were a few beers here, nothing overly exciting, but credible for a bar on a boat.
Anyway, I very much liked this hotel and it came to around £45 a night including breakfast, which I thought was very reasonable to be in the centre of a city such as Gothenburg. The staff members were friendly and one even moved here car so that Richard could park, which was very kind. The breakfast was delicious, the rooms were clean and I’d stay here again when I get around to visiting Gothenburg again.
I’ve completed the main bulk of posts from my trip to Gothenburg last week, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have more stuff to endlessly witter on about. And this is a prototype electric car from Volvo that they produced in 1976 which I thought was quite exciting. Well, relatively exciting, I don’t drive and so there’s a limit to my enthusiasm here.
Inside the car. Volvo produced this car at a time of concern about energy and emissions, although it was too clunky to enter mainstream production. They created two prototypes, one was a four-seat commuter version and the other was a two-seat utility version intended for short-distance work such as deliveries.
The car was a little limited in many ways, it took ten hours to charge the heavy batteries and then it would only go around fifty kilometres. Some of the money invested into the project was from the Swedish telecommunications company, Televerket, who hoped that they could use the vehicles to deliver city mail without generating emissions. Very forward thinking, although this is less “freedom of the open road” and more “a carefully planned errand”, but there we go, technology has to start somewhere.
A lot of great things important for the future happened in 1976.
After dropping the car off at the hire place, which isn’t something that I usually need to worry about on my trips, it was time to get a British Airways flight back to the UK. Richard went through premium security, but I was content muddling through in the poor lane.
That’s helpful of me, I thought I had taken a photo of the flight screen so that I could mention the time, but I appear to have failed to realise that it had gone to the second page with the flights for the day after. Anyway, it was the BA793 flight at 20:00. Once again I had problems with the BA app, so, to be safe, I printed a boarding pass out at the airport.
Richard had priority boarding and he was anxiously waiting to be called forward with the VIPs, as he had spent a small fortune upgrading to business class. I hadn’t upgraded and I was happy to sit and wait until boarding was nearly complete. I was on an aisle seat near the back of the aircraft, so this wasn’t a problem. Boarding announcements were relatively poor, Richard was standing for 26 minutes and they had said they were about to commence boarding quite early on during that process.
I was pleased to be able to board by the stairs as I like that to see the aircraft registration number, although it was partly hidden here. It was though G-EUYW, an Airbus A320 that BA has had since new in 2014. The boarding was more efficient than the chaotic outbound flight, but there were fewer passengers here for the crew to deal with and there were some issues with a lack of staff for bag storage.
In terms of what I paid, which was £20 each way after Avios discount, I was entirely content. But, the tray table was dirty and so they had clearly made only basic efforts to clean the aircraft between flights. I mention this as Wizz Air, in the last 80 or so flights I’ve taken with them, have never offered me a tray table that wasn’t clean.
On another note, the cabin crew were standing so far forwards during the safety demonstration that it was pointless for us at the back (they were at rows 1, 4 and 14, whilst I was on row 28 and there were rows behind me. Most passengers seem to disregard the safety announcement anyway, but I didn’t have much choice here if I had been interested in following intently. They were doing a safety announcement from row 4 as that’s where the economy section of the cabin started, but it felt slightly sub-optimal. I would add at this stage that I have complete confidence in BA’s broader safety processes and always have had.
Disembarking was more time consuming than ideal as it was from the front only, although that more inconvenienced Richard as he was on row 1 and had to wait for me. This is really a side issue as to just how complex baggage storage is on the flight, there are passengers trying to walk backwards to the only space they could place their bags, it’s just a mess. I accept BA’s service style and the layout of the airport isn’t to have stairs at the rear at Heathrow, but it would have been quicker.
On the positive side, the crew were helpful and engaging, with the benefit of free wifi being particularly useful so I could read messages on WhatsApp. I’m going to do a separate post about the comparison between Wizz Air and British Airways, I’m not at this stage sure who will win on my riveting comparison post, but it’s going to be very close. The provision of wifi might just be enough for BA…..
When I did work for British Airways they said that their problem was that the only thing they were consistent at was inconsistency. I suspect little has changed and I certainly see no reason to fly with them again in the near future.
Now back at the airport, we had time to pop to the Lounge by Menzies Aviation, which isn’t to my mind the most exciting of names for the lounge.
It was spacious and clean inside, although it was busier than this when we entered. There were a range of high and low seating areas, although a few more power points would have perhaps been useful.
This was the bulk of the food options, although there was also a blue cheese pasta arrangement which didn’t really tempt me. The chicken pieces and chicken in sauce options here all combined to be something of a chicken focused arrangement.
This was all entirely acceptable, the falafel was decent, alongside the beer, water, crisps and coffee. There was also power and wifi, so I had everything I needed to get by until the flight departed.
The beer was the Norrlands Guld was on self-pour, but it didn’t exactly surprise and delight me in terms of the taste. This obsession with lager, there are tens of different beer styles and they serve the blandest one that they can find…. The beer is rated 2.89 on Untappd which I feel just about sums it up.
Anyway, there’s more to life than beer, so I was very brave and had a second one rather than dwell on it. I also had some Baileys and told Richard as he likes to make a coffee with that and I wasn’t to know that I had finished what was left in the bottle.
The staff here were friendly and everything felt clean and organised. I gained access as Richard’s guest with his BA status, but I could have got in with my Priority Pass card as well. There are no toilets inside the lounge, but I thought that the overall set-up was reasonable. The online reviews are rather less surprised and delighted though.
“Who on earth thought it was a good idea to have hot dogs floating around in a pot with hot sausage broth on the buffet? Honestly disgusting. The whole room stank of sausage, and the smell got into both hair and clothes. It was incredibly unpleasant to have to sit in that stench and it ruined a whole change of clothes that smelled disgustingly of sausage and will stink of sausage the whole trip.”
Each to their own, but this feels a little bit excessive as a sausage hot pot is not exactly tobacco smoke. Although I understand the logic of the annoyance here, the blue cheese pasta was probably not the best choice for a similar reason. They also only have one hot food option, which does limit the number of people that they can cater for.
“This lounge is quite horrible. Technically this is not even a lounge, as a lounge should have comfortable seats to “lounge” in, hence the name.”
The word “lounge” IMO historically means the behaviour of idling, or a place to idle in…. It was very possible to idle in here in my view.
“The first time I’ve been to a lounge where my card only lasts for 3 hours, but okay, this is a matter of agreement between the lounge and the card issuer.”
Other than airline operated lounges, I struggle to think of a lounge which doesn’t have a three hour or similar limit. I wish they didn’t though, I might get to the airport even earlier, especially if there are unlimited crisps.
Anyway, I’m digressing once again. I would note that everything met my expectations, although the food offering could have been a little wider, I had everything that I needed. So, all really rather lovely.
This is the Volvo Experimental Safety Car, developed in 1972 to show off some key new safety elements that the company wanted to introduce.
The front of the car and there’s a safety measure visible there, with the extra long bumper which was designed to allow for someone to survive a collision at 80 kmph.
Inside the car which was fitted with an air bag.
And here’s an early rear screen camera set-up with the less than subtle screen placed on the front dashboard.
And there’s the rear camera.
Volvo produced three concept cars in this safety series and, although I don’t know much about car companies, even I’m aware that they have a formidable reputation for manufacturing safe vehicles.
This Volvo PV56 was a passenger car produced by the company between 1938 and 1945, introduced as an updated and more refined successor to the earlier PV51 and PV52 models. It retained the same basic mechanical layout, but the body was modernised with a smoother, more rounded design influenced by contemporary American styling.
This particular vehicle was modified to become a police vehicle, although the first Volvo car to be used by the police was as early as 1929 with the PV651. There wasn’t a great deal of modification required here, they stuck two red lights on, attached a little police sign (well, “Polis” as they wanted it in Swedish) and that was that, there was no painting of the car required. They did though put a radio in the car, this was revolutionary policing technology for the time.
The Volvo B513 was a bus chassis introduced by Volvo in the mid-1940s, part of the company’s early post-war range of commercial vehicles designed for public transport and regional services. First appearing around 1946, the B513 was typically used for single-deck buses built by independent body manufacturers, which meant the final vehicles could look quite different depending on the coach-builder and their particular favourite arrangements. These buses were widely used in Sweden and Scandinavia for local routes, school transport and rural services, and some versions could seat around 35 to 40 passengers.
This particular bus had a little accident in the late 1950s, but it was fully restored before being left unloved in the Swedish Railway’s garage in Dalsjöfors, near to Borås. It was forgotten about until it was restored some considerable time later and returned to pristine condition.
My own view on these things is that I would have rather they wheeled in the bus which had been left unloved and with bits falling off it. Personally, I like authenticity and to see the bus as it last was, with all of its faults and missing bits. I rather feel that I’m looking at a modern copy with these things, although I’m sure huge amounts of work got it to look as it currently does.
This is one of the first Volvo cars, the ÖV4, one of 205 cars that were produced between 1927 and 1929. It had a four-cylinder engine and 28 horsepower which might not have been the most powerful in the world, but it was the first mass produced car in Sweden.
The first car came rolling off the factory line in Gothenburg on 14 April 1927, a date regarded as the birth of the company’s car manufacturing. The name comes from the Swedish Öppen Vagn 4 cylindrar, meaning “open car, four cylinders” and the model was a four-seat open tourer designed to cope with Sweden’s rough roads.
Built with a wooden body frame covered in steel panels and usually finished in dark blue with black wings, the car was sometimes nicknamed “Jakob” after an early prototype. The premiere of the car went a bit wrong, a rear axle gear was installed incorrectly and the car only drove in reverse. It was a sub-optimal situation for the inaugural test drive, but the museum notes that from then on “Volvo moves forward”…..
Painted in 1923, this work by Bror Hjorth (1894-1968) captures a scene that is less about a whirlwind romance and more about the quiet, heavy reality of surviving a Swedish winter together. While they might be a happy couple, their expressions suggest a happiness that has been forged through decades of agreeing on exactly how high the woodpile should be and whose turn it is to ignore the dog.
It’s a lovely piece of folk art and I rather like the air of desperation, there’s too much frivolity in the world. This is the sort of thing that I’d hang on the wall if I collected art and had an ability to put things on the wall without them falling down. The artwork was acquired in 1937, a gift from Ernst Colliander and Conny Colliander, who were local art collectors.
