When the opportunity to visit our dear friend David's brother Giorgi in Sweden arose, we snapped it up immediately. Hop on a short bus ride (3 hours from Oslo) to a totally new country to meet a mysterious individual who was only described as "an amazing chef with a massive beard?" Alll Abooooarrddd.

Giorgi is a graduate student in robotics and computing (or something like that) at Chalmers University of Technology -- an institution conveniently located just a few kilometers (apparently they use the metric system in Sweden?) from the downtown / waterfront area. Chalmers has an auspicious connection to our current situation. It was the school that Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as "PewDiePie", attended. PewDiePie is the top ranking YouTuber in the world, with over 40 million subscribers and 10 billion views on his channel (it's primarily video game related) and earnings of over $12,000,000. We did not see him.

We also did not see the three Michelin Star rated Gothenburg Museum of Art, which features a curation of Nordic art up to six centuries old.

You can take a lovely Paddan canal boat tour through the beautiful intersecting waterways above which the city is built. We did not do or see this.

And of course you can drop by the lovely Trädgårdsföreningen (Garden Society of Gothenburg), although we did not, to enjoy one of the most carefully preserved 19th century parks anywhere in Europe.

So what did we do in Gothenburg, you ask? Almost nothing. and it was SENSATIONAL. We wined and dined with Giorgi, watched movies on his projector, sat all day in a coffee shop researching dank memes and analyzing trap music videos -- and we ate at McDonald's. Only fries. STOP LOOKING AT US, SWAN..

Using Giorgi's projector to it's fullest capabilities

We've been traveling for 3 months now, and have been in 6 cities across 5 countries within the last 2 weeks. Can we all just chill out for a little bit instead of trying to squeeze in some Lonely Planet approved mad dash to the highlights? Because, um, spending 6 hours in a coffee shop watching the world of Gothenburg go by was immensely satisfying. And we are liable to do it again in YOUR city.

Gothenburg, Sweden -- The Things We Did Not See