Jenny's travel guide to Gothenburg and elsewhere

Last year I took part in a small summer course at Angered Folk High School. The course was called The City in Writing (as in how you depict the city in writing). We went around to different places in Gothenburg, wrote and read.

It's July now, and I sometimes have a hard time with July. And soon I'll have some time off too, and then life will simply be too informal for my taste. So I'm making a little writing challenge for myself! As often as I can, but preferably every day, I'm going to write about a place I feel very close to. We can call this challenge: Jenny's travel guide to Gothenburg and elsewhere. Or just the Writing Challenge.
You have to start somewhere, and right now I'm sitting at Returhuset's café in the Alelyckan recycle park. Alelyckan is an area in northern Gothenburg with a recycling station and three shops: Återbruket is a recycling store which sells used building materials, then you have a charity second-hand store, and last but not least Returhuset's café. (Returhuset = The house of recycling.)

The whole area is my Happy Place. You can almost make a whole day of it! First I drive to the recycling station and throw away old junk. My partner recently informed me that in Stockholm, you don't need to have a special card or a driving license to be allowed to throw away junk. Is that a Gothenburg thing?? I don't know what to make of this information. I probably feel about the same (although still the opposite) as when I was informed as an early teenager that Stockholm also has an ice cream truck, that it's NOT an exclusive Gothenburg thing. 

But anyway. After throwing away old junk, I strut around at Återbruket and look at new (albeit old) stuff. Like toilets and old doors with flaking paint. Maybe I'll buy a jigsaw. The blade is just a little rusty on the surface. I once got 25 tiles for the Women's College where I work. They needed it for an art project. You can find things like that at Återbruket. After that I go to Stadsmissionen and buy a floral dress that I absolutely do not need, because I already have to many. And then I finish it off at the recycling center's café Returhuset where they sell both coffee and cake, plants in cut-up milk cartons and freshly serviced bicycles. The café has the nicest permanent wheelchair ramp I've ever seen, and the nicest accessible toilet. 

Outside, freight trains and trams rattle towards the city outskirts. The freeway rumbles along. Giant verbena and poppies stand tall in the pallet collars. It's nice in the sun. And it smells VERY good.