Exploring Sweden’s stylish Gothenburg

The walls of Familjen, a buzzing restaurant and bar, are decked out in reds and whites and adorned with photos of the people of Gothenburg, Sweden. They’re all attractive, of course – rugged guys sporting just the right amount of stubble and girls with china doll features who’d surely break your heart given half a chance.

Inside Familjen, hot and boisterous on a Friday night with its heaters turned up full to fight off the Scandic chill, and its air thick with anticipation, the punters were draped in cool clothes – not showy or ostentatious because in northern Europe that really won’t do. Bling is most certainly not the thing here – rather the aesthetic is comfortable cool. At least that’s the plan – looking like you’ve put no effort in at all can be a trial in itself.

We were served understated food. A simple jar of whipped chicken liver paté with pickles and roasted onions on flatbread astounded. Ragout of reindeer was delicious and cloudberry compote and ice cream was a perfect end to memorable meal.

The next day, along the Avenue – the main drag of Sweden’s second-largest city, the parents pushing buggies looked stylish too. As did their offspring – my companion and I watched in wonder at the mini hipsters swooshing past on three wheels and whenever we saw a kid dressed like a hipster from East London or New York’s Brooklyn we’d tug each other on the arm. This was happening all the time. But at the same time, unlike Brooklyn or East London and despite the very stylish little people, this city appears not to try very hard.

There are no sights, no spires, no towers, no forts, no skyscrapers. It’s very understated in a way Dubai now could never be. The buildings are low rise and they sit on a sort of floating city that evokes Amsterdam. No wonder – it was Dutch engineers who came and taught the Swedes how to build on these marshes, and how to use canals to drain, just like De Pijp in Holland’s capital. There’s very good reason why there aren’t tall buildings in the city centre and that’s because they’d sink into the marsh. Instead, canals thread through the streets and the juxtaposition of water and city centre boulevards also makes you think of those other cosmopolitan port cities with the same shape and the same watery inflections, such as Copenhagen and New York.

There’s a huge terminal where ships used to sail from headed for New York – Sweden was not as rich as it is now in the 1800s and thousands of Swedes headed to the US, to Michigan and Minnesota ultimately, where the cold and the forests reminded them of home and where they sought their fortunes in a new world.

But we stayed at the Clarion Post outside the central station. This is a new, fun hotel that gets ever so slightly near to some semblance bling – the closest Swedes would allow themselves to get – with some purple interiors and the gold-tinted entrance hall.

Gold is the least Scandinavian of all the colours – this is a country of green, brown and grey, mostly, and if you’ve ever stayed in a W Hotel around the world you’ll feel right at home here. It used to be the city’s main post office and sure enough there is an unfolded and flattened-out post van nailed to the entrance lobby wall – though for some reason it’s a post van from Norway not Sweden. Upstairs in Norda, the American-themed restaurant, you can see where the post office counters and tellers used to be.

People think Swedes are dour – in some ways they are, but they’re also people of the world. They love to travel, to hear stories – like their Viking ancestors. Their English is so perfect it puts us visitors to shame. I could practise my Swedish, but instead I head to the top of a tower built in the middle of the hotel, which grates with the low-rise building and the low-rise city but does have one advantage – from the top you can see the hills and parks of the city laid out, the bridges and the docks too.

It’s to the latter that we head next by comfortable, clean and cheap tram on a date with the Volvo 1975 P7, an acknowledged design icon of motoring history and looks as flash as a bobby-dazzler. And when we hop in it takes us round Gothenburg on a unique time-travel tour like it’s just rolled off the production line.

Unfortunately the mystery is broken just after we leave the car park of the Novotel when we find out one of the other Volvos (they travel in convoy so you can follow the guide’s lead car) has broken down – so it’s a taxi for them but a ride in a stylish classic for us. There are ashtrays and arm rests in the back and I feel like Don Draper as we drive out to Hisingen, the island to the north of Gothenburg, where our guide takes us to the Volvo Factory.

The former docks of this mercantile city are being turned into trendy places to live by having an array of multicoloured super-modern housing blocks dropped on to them. “It’s like Docklands in London, right?” enthuses our guide. And it certainly does remind me of Docklands – glass-skinned apartment blocks and slightly soulless regeneration streetscapes with fresh new paint, but few people braving the windswept streets.

Architecture in Gothenburg will never bore you but fashion and design is perhaps an even bigger preoccupation among the locals. There’s even a museum of fashion and design where most cities just have, well, a lot of shops.

Gothenburg has those too: Magasingartan and the streets running off it heave with boutiques and the most beautiful home furnishings. For something more offbeat the Langgatan streets can’t be beaten with cafés, record and clothes stores, bowling alleys and the like. It feels a bit like Williamsburg in New York. We stop for coffee at Two Little Birds, which gives over its attic space to a revolving art exhibition and also has board games like Scrabble - in Swedish of course, where ‘V’s are worth only 2 points because they’re so common.

Up the hill on Linnegatan it’s more chi-chi, with florists and fine restaurants ruling the roost. The apartment blocks are larger and swisher, but there’s a lovely Nordic touch halfway up. The Linneterrassen, an old wooden building with gables and a huge terrace is where the middle class residents of the district come for a sundowner in summertime.

Another place people head when the sun shines is to the Trädgårdsföreningen or Garden Society. This is a thoroughly English-themed park steeped in civility and quiet grandeur. There are huge palm houses which ape London’s Kew gardens’ and wonderfully tended roses – and even the lawns and playgrounds are totally free of neglect and decay.

A third of Sweden’s entire GDP passes through this city (in and out). Its style and fashion and architecture are international, as is its food scene. And there’s even a Museum of World Culture, which is slightly odd but nonetheless reflects upon the power of art, design and style that comes from different cultures and countries all around the world. Cosmopolitan, stylish Gothenburg is surely a perfect place for such an institution.