Malmö

At 10am Natalie, Lindsay, Hannah, and I were on our way to the train station to begin our journey to Sweden for the weekend. After being yelled at in the train station for having our bikes, we managed to get the correct tickets and made our way to the train track. The plan was to spend Saturday in Malmö, spend the night, and take another 20 minute train to Lund on Sunday. On the train ride over, Natalie and I looked over a map of Malmö and created a brief outline of options for the day. It was a surprisingly quick train ride, and we soon found ourselves at Malmö Central Station. Not sure what floor to take the elevator to from our platform, we soon found ourselves at the top of a parking garage. We then proceeded to ride our bikes down the garage to the exit, luckily there were no cars. Parking garages have a steep incline, especially on a bike! I'm glad we brought our bikes, I already knew this was going to be a fun weekend.

We got directions to our hostel and began the short bike ride. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining over the many parks, canals, and people in bathing suits enjoying the sunshine. The hostel front desk staff was on a break, so we weren't able to check in when we arrived. It was a little past noon and we were beginning to get hungry, so we went across the street to pass the time and enjoy some lunch. I had a mouthwatering shrimp salad with a dill and mayonnaise dressing. In order to energize myself for the rest of the day, I decided to splurge on a latte.

Still not able to check into the hostel until 3pm, we decided to leave our backpacks in the storage room and go explore the city. We biked through King's Park and almost ran into a flock of birds and a flock of people as we weaved through the paths. We saw a windmill at the other end of the park and decided to bike that direction. It was just a freestanding windmill, so we decided to take a picture in front of it before we continued on. We asked a nice woman to take our picture using an iPhone. She appeared to be a great photographer and was mindful of angles, lighting, and landscape. Afterwards we looked at the pictures and found that of the six pictures she took, every one had part of her finger covering the edge of the lens and cutting off the upper left corner of the screen. With a little editing and cropping, at least one of the pictures would be salvageable. 

Surrounded by parks and canals, we toured Malmöhus Castle, Southern Sweden's largest museum. Malmöhus was constructed in 1434 under the direction of Erik of Pomerania, king of the Kalmar Union which brought Norway, Sweden, and Denmark together under a single monarch. In the 16th century, King Christian III of Denmark and Norway rebuilt the citadel to create a modern defensive fortress, a castle, and the home of the Governors of Malmöhus County. Today, Malmöhus has been restored and forms part of Malmö Museer. 

Malmö Museer has several permanent exhibitions focusing on history, natural history, technology, and seafaring in addition to temporary exhibitions throughout the year. My first impression of the museum was rather strange. We walked up the stairs to find a television broadcasting a music video of a woman dressed in futuristic clothes singing about the importance of art preservation. Hannah and I interpreted this video as satirical in that you go to museums and view otherworldly exhibits that don't have context for your life, and it seemed as though she was poking at the idea that art should be accessible and readily available to those who seek it out. To make things more interesting we then moved into the next room and watched a short video highly inappropriate for young audiences and those who are offended easily. "Whaled Women" was a satirical video jabbing at issues with immigration and gender. I was intrigued, confused, bewildered, and curious what the rest of the museum had in store.

Moving past this initial exhibit, we found more traditional exhibits including Fashion without Waist. This exhibit puts fashion in a social, economic, and cultural context starting from the 1920s onwards. Another exhibit contained toys throughout the ages. This toy collection contained about 6,000 objects from 1850s onwards. It had everything from musical instruments, dolls of all kinds, mechanical toys, clowns, and many more.

We finished our museum tour by walking through the Cannon Tower and the Animals and Nature exhibit. The aquarium exhibit contained Swedish fish, frogs, snakes, and other aquatic creatures. The Colour, Form and Function exhibit contained various animals including a kangaroo, butterflies, birds, and a life-sized reconstructed dinosaur.

Continuing to explore the city, we walked around Stortorget, Lilla Torg, and main shopping centers. Stortorget became the main square in Malmö in 1538 for horse trams, and has since transitioned into a popular tourist attraction for it's equestrian statue and the Town Hall. The rest of the day we continued exploring Malmö.

It was well past 3pm, so we were able to check into our room at the hostel. After getting settled in, Lindsay, Natalie, and I went to grab food while Hannah napped. Taking recommendations from the woman at the hostel front desk, we decided to give Ölkaféet a try. The food was delicious and we enjoyed sitting outside while people watching. Lindsay managed to burn her tongue so badly that it was red and practically blistering, but other than this small incident dinner was quite enjoyable.

It had already been a long and exhausting day and by the time we finished dinner and got back to our room it was approaching 9pm. We all desperately needed a nap, so within five minutes the lights were out and we were fast asleep. Hearing an alarm go off somewhere in the distance, I couldn't manage to open my eyes. It wasn't until Natalie started playing pump up music while banging on the table that got me up and going. It was 10pm and Natalie was ready to go out for a night on the town. It would have been so easy to just go back to sleep, but we had only one day in Malmö and we had to take advantage of our time here.

We started at a casual bar where we had a few drinks before heading to a karaoke and dance club. At this first bar we met a guy named Jim who ended up hanging out with Natalie most of the night. He was described by Natalie as a less attractive version of Ryan Gosling, which I would say is fairly accurate. He soon adopted the nicknames Slim Jim, Jim Bean, Jimbo, or whatever else you could add to Jim. Hannah hung out with a guy originally from Albania who now lives in Sweden. His name was hard to pronounce, but he told us to call him Flo. He was a goofy guy, and judging by his nickname and its' relation to auto insurance commercials, we couldn't help but wonder if he could get us some good deals on auto insurance.

At 4am on our way home we stopped to get falafels, our typical drunk routine. It is always a great chance to tell stories, share experiences, and talk about the night's events. The common theme for our day was, "So much Malmö, so little timö."