Existential authenticity in tourism and Ahlströms konditori from 1901, Gothenburg

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Hot chocolate, at Ahlströms konditori, Swedish west coast, Gothenburg.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2014

In the past week, a conversation in a restaurant at Haga, between myself and a restaurant steward, after lunch when I was looking for cookies to go with my coffee:

“Yes, can I help you? You’re looking for something?”
“Yes, do you happen to have cookies to go with the coffee?”
“Only on Fridays, sorry. But you can walk over to Jacobs. They have cookies and dessert in general. We don’t.”

Two things struck me when I first arrived in Gothenburg about the cityscape in the early 2000s. The first was how lacking in skyscrapers the city of Gothenburg was, and the second, much due to the first, you apparently needed to walk for miles to get to where you wanted. Continue reading “Existential authenticity in tourism and Ahlströms konditori from 1901, Gothenburg”