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Goteborg is the second city of Sweden. It lies on the fjord of the countrys west coast, at the mouth of the Gota River, and looks across the Kattegat strait to the tip of Denmark, then, peering around Norways rump, out to the North Sea and Scotland. Ah, Goteborg, sighed the desk clerk at my Stockholm hotel, a young woman who radiated, in that Swede way, high birth weight, a sense of fair play and sensual allure, all packed into one carefree smile. The air is saltier there. In Sweden, there is no mentioning Goteborg without inviting a comparison to Stockholm. So you are going to Goteborg? a tweedy young man asked me, incredulously, in an espresso bar on the capitals fashionable Sodermalm island. You know there is really only one street there. Together the two cities are like textbook examples from a birth-order study. Stockholm, the older sibling, is smart, bold, so royally self-possessed it occasionally forgets it is not an only child. Little Goteborg — its population hovers around half a million — is puckish, tough, creative and streaked through with a certain dark impulsiveness and self-doubt.