Gothenburg Culture Festival – Kulturkalaset – has take place every year since 2007. This year it ran in conjunction with EuroPride. There is always a huge range of different activities at the Culture Festival. I don’t know whether there is something for absolutely everyone, but that’s definitely the objective. Certainly the listings brochure is like a fat newspaper and I for one felt spoiled for choice.
Culture Festival Objectives
This year I had two personal objectives. First, I wanted to practice using my “brand new second-hand” camera (a Canon 700D) and associated lenses. Second, I wanted to see inside a couple of Gothenburg buildings that aren’t usually open to the general public. I managed both. I’ve posted some of the following photos on my Instagram and/or Twitter accounts, but this photo essay is an opportunity to share them, and more, and add a few words of explanation.
The Culture Festival opened on Tuesday 14th August with a concert – Sverige tolkar David Bowie. This involved a number of performers (mostly singers, but also a couple of rappers and a performance poet) interpreting David Bowie’s music. It was an opportunity to try out my newly bought Tamron zoom.
Love and marriage
On Thursday I spent an hour or so tracking down a photo exhibition, advertised in the listings as Love and Marriage (Kärlek och äktenskap). Initially I couldn’t find it, and nobody I asked could help me. It turned out smaller and more discrete than I imagined. It was in the pavilion in the EuroPride park where the Swedish Church was offering drop-in marriages. (The would-be spouses needed to have legal ID cards and giltig hindersprovning – valid documentation showing no impediments to their marriage.)
After that I took myself down into the underground for a guided tour of the “Catacombs”. Not real catacombs but tunnels that once ran through the Carolus Dux Bastion. Carolus Dux was once a part of the city of Gothenburg’s defensive fortifications. Now it’s hidden in the foundations of the University’s School of Education (Pedagogen).
That evening there was Jazz music in Kronhus Square. One couple who took advantage of it to dance the evening away.
Finally, on Saturday 19th I went on another guided tour, this time of Kronhuset. Kronhuset is Gothenburg’s oldest non-religious building. It was originally built in the 1640s as an arsenal. It has also done duty down the years as an assembly room, concert hall, church and barracks. And it once played host to the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen).
