Let’s resume Dr HH’s journey through Gothenburg. You can picture me typing away at my computer while writing my dissertation, my phone buzzing with his latest updates.

The next day I kicked off my day with a trip to Haga on the hunt for a vegan cinnamon bun. Haga pops up in all the tourist guides as a must-visit district but it was really just a long street with lots of cafes and shops. Maybe it’s a good spot for some local souvenirs but it wasn’t really what I was after. I did get my hands on a GIANT vegan cinnamon bun at Cafe Husaren. This place is a tourist magnet, it claims to be the inventor of the Hagabullen (giant cinnamon buns) and was absolutely heaving when I passed by the previous afternoon, so I made sure I arrived nice and early in the day.

This thing was the size of my head and weighed around 500g (my Kindle is in the photo there to give some sense of scale). It was a tasty bun, lots of sugar and cardamom with a good sticky cinnamon filling too. Unsurprisingly, it got a bit samey after a while and I got a bit bored. It was good to see the full size vegan option available but I’ve definitely had much better treats of this type, and the coffee wasn’t great either.

My next stop was a trip to the Botanical Gardens. I was feeling a bit warm so decided against going into any of the hot houses and just went for a little wander round the outdoor areas. It was a very nice and relaxing place, and a bit more rugged and outdoorsy than other botanical gardens I’ve been to, so it added a bit of an extra sense of exploration and adventure. The garden leads straight into some hiking paths that make up part of huge multi day trails but I didn’t have time for any of that today because…

I had a day ticket for the Way Out West festival where Blur were headlining! This was a bit of luck really as I had originally planned to visit the week before but changed my mind when I was actually booking my tickets and I don’t remember why. One of the exciting things about the festival, beyond the music, was the fact that it was completely vegetarian with plenty of vegan options available. They had some big name local chefs doing fine dining tasting menus but sadly they were only suitable for vegetarians. Maybe in the future they’ll get a vegan option on the go too.

Oatly were there with a promotional area giving away coffee and soft serve ice cream. The soft serve was very much how I remember dairy soft serve being and I couldn’t resist getting chilli threads as a topping. I also managed to snaffle some free Oatly socks for Ms. HH by waiting in a queue forever (okay, actually only about 10 minutes) and watching an Oatly promotional video.

Like all good festivals these days, there was a huge range of food on offer and lots of places did have vegan options. For my evening meal I settled on the Babemba food truck. This a West African restaurant with vegan choices, and at the festival almost everything on offer was vegan. The Babemba restaurant popped on my Happy Cow searches and I had considered going there anyway, so eating at the food truck seemed like a great idea. There were a few different options available or I could pay a bit more and get a mixed plate, so mixed plate it was!

The bowl had a farini (a nice crispy donut with a soft centre), okra spenat gryta (okra and spinach fried with a load of aromatics and spices), tiga (a peanut stew with various vegetables in it), and nandji (a tomato stew with some beans and pulses), and it was all served with two types of rice and I got a blob of chilli sauce – this was incredibly hot. It was quite late into my day and I was tired, so my notes and memories for this are a bit sparse. The one thing I can say without any doubt is that it was all absolutely delicious. I remember the peanut stew in particular standing out as being very tasty.

Throughout the day I saw a few acts (Arlo Parks, Pusha T, Amyl and the Sniffers) but I was really here to see Blur and it was worth it. An enjoyable set with lots of hits and a few new songs, just a shame it went on until midnight. That is way past my bedtime!

The next day I had eyed up breakfast at En Deli Haga. This is a vegetarian buffet place that I had been past earlier in the week and I spotted that they offered a breakfast plate with vegan options. With not a lot else to choose from at breakfast time, I decided to go for it. I went in and ordered the breakfast plate without any information about what it would be and was a bit disappointed when it came out. Much like Ms HH, I don’t really want to be paying a restaurant to put slices of fruit and vegetables on my plate. She hates watermelon so would have been absolutely fuming at this. (I did in fact commiserate with Dr HH when he sent me this picture – Ms HH.)

Most things are easily recognisable from the photo. There was tahini and fig jam in a couple of pots at the top, a lentil ball in the top corner, and some hummus in the rectangular pot. Everything on the plate was tasty. The fruit and vegetables were fine, the cheese slices were a pretty standard tasting Violife-style cheese, the spreads and the olives were perfectly nice too. I enjoyed the hummus, it was a bit chunky and really well seasoned with a good amount of garlic and a nice chilli kick. The lentil ball was excellent, I best described it as a tarka dal paté. It was thick and spreadable and was really well seasoned. I would definitely have preferred more bread over the fruit and salad though.

I didn’t really have much planned for this day, so I worked stuff out as I went along. I took in some of the outdoor spaces in the city and paid a visit to the Design Museum. Again, this is probably somewhere I wouldn’t have normally gone to but I was feeling a bit tired and it was included in the museum pass I had bought, so I thought it would be a nice way to have a relaxing hour or two. It was the temporary exhibition that really stood out for me here, there was a lot of interesting textile work involved in making lots of fun outfits. I didn’t find the rest of the museum too interesting and wouldn’t be rushing back if I visited again. They did have a nice café downstairs so I stopped for a coffee whilst I watched the end of a Women’s World Cup match on my phone. I didn’t look at the food too closely but this place did pop up on Happy Cow as having decent vegan options. I also popped into the Natural History Museum which had some good skeletons on show but there was also a taxidermy blue whale that people used to be able to sit in. It looked pretty tacky and distasteful and just felt really disrespectful.

For my last meal of the holiday I had booked in at Yammy Kitchen. I had tried to get in a few days earlier but it was fully booked, so I made sure I had booked ahead for today. It’s a Japanese and Korean restaurant with clearly labelled vegan options and I was mostly lured in by the promise of mapo tofu. It’s a bit of a confusing place where you have to order using the QR code and online app. After being pointed to my table, I went straight to the bathroom so I didn’t actually get these explicit instructions and sat for a while reading my book. When nobody turned up, I realised what I needed to do. I already knew what I wanted before I had stepped foot in the place and quickly ordered agedashi tofu for a starter and mapo tofu for my main.

It all came out together, not what I was expecting but there was no clear way for me to communicate this to my machine interface. The agedashi tofu was delicious battered and deep fried silken tofu, but it was not agedashi tofu. This had quite a thick crispy batter rather than the expected light crunchy corn flour coating. The mapo was very enjoyable. It had a good amount of spice and that nice Szechuan tingle going on, and there was a respectable amount of tofu with a good texture. I was a bit put off by the crunch of the peanuts in there which didn’t quite work for me. There were also some peas, seaweed, and mushrooms in there to provide a bit of variety to each mouthful. It wasn’t as good as the one in New York, it didn’t quite give me the same level of Szechaun numbing feeling and I didn’t think the choice of other ingredients in the bowl worked as well. The extra portion of rice in the photo was completely unnecessary and ordered accidentally as I didn’t spot the mapo actually came with rice.

The next morning I was on my way back to Prague after a thoroughly enjoyable few days away. I’d recommend a trip to Gothenburg, the islands were absolutely stunning and I enjoyed the sights and museums I visited. The vegan options were pretty good on the whole, there was a good variety of restaurants and lots of options to choose from. I did struggle a bit to find places that I wanted to go that were open at breakfast and lunch times so had to make some compromises on my food choices. Why don’t places open at a reasonable hour?!