Founder’s Diary: Gothenburg

Gothenburg is one of our up-and-coming InterNations Communities in Sweden, with as many as 2500 members.

If you know a little about the city, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise: After Stockholm, Gothenburg is Sweden’s second-largest city with over 500,000 inhabitants, a historical university town located about 400 km from the capital. It has a sizable immigrant population as well – about 20% of residents are foreign-born.

Only a two-hour flight from Munich, the city is well worth a visit. Unfortunately, I’ve missed the summer of the century in Sweden. By now the weather is back to normal – meaning some sunshine, interrupted by a few clouds and a light shower of rain once in a while.

As I’m on a tight schedule, I can’t explore the city upon arrival. I just manage to quickly check in at my hotel, which is luckily not very far from tonight’s venue for the Gothenburg InterNations event. The Trädgår’n is an award-winning restaurant and nightclub in one of Gothenburg’s lovely parks – definitely an ideal location to meet up.

Trädgår’n, I’m told, is short for Trädgårdsföreningen, the Garden Society of Gothenburg, who founded this horticultural park over 150 years ago. It’s now one of the best-preserved 19th-century parks in Sweden, featuring a vintage palm house and a world-famous rose garden.

Networking Bingo

We have booked the whole venue for InterNations, and Lucia, our InterNations Ambassador in Gothenburg, welcomes our members. Lucia is a Romanian expat, with Swedish now being her second nationality. An economist and human geographer with an MBA, she has worked in the financial industry and is also interested in related research.

As the event host, Lucia has come up with an original way of greeting her guests: She hands them a networking bingo card. You then have to collect the names, home countries, and occupations of up to nine other InterNations members. It’s a wonderful ice-breaker – everyone starts immediately to talk to various attendees, to mingle and circulate. With about 90 people from more than 30 different countries present, it shouldn’t be hard to fill that bingo card!

However, the winner will be drawn later on. First, it’s time for me to address the Gothenburg Community and say a few words of welcome. It’s a great opportunity to thank Lucia and the Consuls of our five local Activity Groups, as well as to say goodbye and thank you to Alexandra, an Austrian expat and our former Local Ambassador.

After my speech, we get to the second part of the bingo game: We now get to pick from the bowl full of business cards that were collected at the entrance from all arriving members for the game. Once we have started calling out people’s names, it takes a bit of patience, but we finally get our lucky winner.

The winner is Karin, a Swedish “repat” and passionate researcher who has just returned from a long stay in the US. There she worked on a postgraduate project at Columbia University’s Medical Center to study motor neurone biology and disease, a very impressive resumé. It is her first InterNations Event, and I hope she really enjoyed it – and not only because she got a nice book about cocktails out of it when winning first prize in the Bingo game.

Well, everyone seems to have a good time. As the official part of evening is winding down, a few members suggest moving on to another venue called Lounge(s). The nightclub located in a three-story building with a restaurant and three different dance floors seems to be very popular amongst the local crowd.

Exploring Gothenburg

The next day I meet Lucia, our Ambassador, together with her husband Andrei, another Romanian expat, at the Sjömagasinet Restaurant, a picturesque venue a little outside of Gothenburg, right by the seacoast. It is a great restaurant (boasting one star in the Guide Michelin), owned by Swedish entrepreneur and celebrity chef Ulf Wagner. He created a gemytlig Swedish atmosphere and serves mouth-watering food based on fresh local produce and traditional cuisine, like all sorts of herring or fish ravioli.

No wonder that the two have taken me here: Andrei is Consul of DinnerNations Gothenburg, our local foodies group, and they both share a passion for gourmet food from all over the globe. They frequently take out our InterNations members for really cool activities, like an Afro-Caribbean dinner or a local shellfish buffet.

After a delicious lunch, we take the ferry back to the city center. The boat ride provides an excellent view of Gothenburg, its docks and waterfront, some of the university buildings, etc. Unfortunately, there’s no time to visit one of the many islands in the Gothenburg archipelago – so, no romantic scenery and outdoor fun in the Kattegat for me. There’s definitely less nature than in Iceland on this trip…

In the evening, I have dinner at one of the restaurants around Andra Långgatan, a popular street for vintage shopping and dining among artsy and creative types. Before jetting back to Germany, I also get to discover Haga, a charming district with well-preserved wooden houses and lots of cozy cafés, and from the top of Skansen Kronan, a 17th-century fortress, I take a long last look of the cityscape. Hej då, Göteborg!

(Image credit: 1) Göteborg, Street Sign: public domain 2) Lana Vidmar 3)-5) Malte Zeeck / InterNations)