Welcome

Following the crowning of my NHS experience with a stint at a PCT and the resulting redundancy (traumatic, though much wanted and worked for), my husband and I are going back to my roots near a small village in Smaland, Sweden. These are our experiences.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Big town barista

Yesterday I trotted (well drove carefully and steadily) along to Göteborg (Gothenburg) to have my course in baristaship.  So I don't just thrown things at the coffee machine and hope for the best. I did want to take the train, but they don't run after 8.30pm (WHAT!!) and the course finished at 9.

I thought I'd go a bit earlier so I could do some art galleries and some shops, as I was visiting the 'city'.  Managed to find a parking space, after a bit of getting lostness brought on by G being so small (compared to London).  I overshot my turning off the motorway, thought I'd gone miles out of my way, turned down a street in roughly the right direction (Karin's guide to finding your way - point the nose of the car/bike/human sort of the right way and be prepared to wander a bit).  And there I was! Amazing - I think I'll get an invoice for the congestion charge in a day or two and parking cost 190SEK, though...

Anyway, I mooched around the National Gallery, had lunch in the restaurant there (ha! they think they were pretentious! Pah, come to London if you want to see pretentious!) , wandered the streets and visited a couple of cafes (study visits, of course).  Only just got to the time of the course and I wanted to go back to the forest.  Enough of the city already.   It was sort of 'been there, done that' and near enough everything after London is a village anyway, so I might as well be in a real one.   Don't get me wrong, I love Göteborg, (more than Stockholm, sorry), and it would be interesting to visit megacity other than London, but I'm done with the people and the traffic and need to wear hats and beards inside. 

The course was fab.  Interesting and fun, I'm really good at lattes but need more practice with my froth for cappuccinos.  I'm also looking forward to making an elk out of the foam for when I enter the next national barista competition (NOT!).  

The way home was not so much fun, though I still drove carefully and steadily, also, in addition, very, very slowly.  It started snowing and I've never driving on a motorway, when it was impossible to see where there was a road, let alone where the road markings were.  There was no way I was overtaking anything, especially as it was getting worse and worse, so I was very glad when I lodged behind another slow car and then another came in behind me etc etc, so we convoyed at 45km/h, whilst being roared past by lorries and idiot volvo owners.  It was fun seeing the skid marks further up the way.  Snow stopped completely when the motorway stopped in a roundabout and the road was perfectly clear.

Next step - buying a machine.

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