MALMO, SWEDEN

2016-08-24, 18:48, JASON

BUDGET

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Coming here was completely by random. Initially we intended on going back to Copenhagen to spend the rest of our trip, but we decided to take the train and hop over to Malmo side, Sweden. The train only cost about 17 Singapore dollars (seemingly cheap in a place like Copenhagen), and was about twenty minutes away.

Upon arriving, bliss, because for once it was sunny. And it wasn't cheating-it-kind-of-bit sunny, it was bright and sunny, full on. On top of that, Malmo pride weekend had just started, so the city was decked with rainbow flags along the river. There weren't any celebrations, but the flags were enough. For money, since the Nordic counries (Finland aside) have all their own version of kroner / krona / crowns, we had to exchange some of our Danish money over. We only exchanged 100 Danish Krona, and tried to survive off of that money. That was probably enough just for one supermarket meal, but we weren't there for too long. 

Since we had gotten in at about 15:00, we were limited with the time we could spend there before checking into our hostel back in Copenhagen. We visited a tourist information center and she gave us a map and outlined some of the cool things to see in Malmo. We would start with the old Malmohus Castle, walk into the two town squares, and then take a stroll through the rest of town. Most of the tourist attractions are centered nearby the main train terminal, so we held near there as we only had a few hours in the city.

The area of town outside of the main square is relatively quiet. There weren't many people walking around, and it felt a bit like we were in Copenhagen while walking towards the mermaid. It was a very quiet city without much congestion, and we'd forgotten what that felt like. Walking along the river, we finally reached Malmohus Castle, but of course couldn't afford the entrance ticket in since we'd break our cash, and eating was more important for us. So, what we ended up doing was just doing a walk of the grounds. It had a castle quality about it: freshwatever, low-rise brush surrounding the banks of the moat, with a small bridge entrance on one side. In the moat, a modern addition, a tour boat carrying several passengers on an English-led tour. If you looked across the horizon, you would see the famous spiral Turning Torso building built in the newer parts of Malmo city, in direct contrast with this historic structure. Inside, cobblestone pavement lining a mostly reddish or mahogany castle wall. However, the only difference was the look of the castle, which looked to be more like a summer home of royalty as opposed to a defensive unit. The exterior was constructed in a simple style, with very few windows, maybe one row just lining the width of the wall (how you could tell it wasn't a vacation home -- not enough windows). There weren't any tall walls or strong posts, rather, just a flat facade of bricks. There wasn't much else in the castle except for the occasional modern sculpture. If anything, they put all the interesting stuff inside. 

Because we couldn't afford going in, we wanted to make the most of the area, so we walked around the outside of the castle -- the external castle grounds -- and explored the free outdoor park. It was probably the most Swedish thing I've ever seen, which is not much aside from those nude scenes of Alexander Skarsgard in that vampire show. Old men putting their own chairs and tables up laughing and drinking beer. A kid playing soccer with bleached blonde hair with his dad, and a windmill in the wide open lawn in the background. Students laughing and smiling in their Scandinavian bliss on their picnic blankets. Walking further along, there was a nice garden cafe that was lined along the river where young Swedes were indulging in their overpriced alcohol in the sun, basking in all its glory since it hadn't been around for the past few days. There was also a cafe (overpriced) near the riverbank, with a lot of Swedes having biked there and parked there for a light lunch. We had forgotten how quiet these spacious countries with low density could be. Everyone was at a relaxed pace and the river seemed to flow in a similar fashion. 

The main town was built in a similar fashion to Copenhagen, in a Nordic style with flat faced buildings. However, Malmo was unique in that there were two main squares in which many restaurants were structured around. When you walked into the square, there were some historic buildings but mostly it was full of people sitting in the restaurants' outdoor seating and basking in the sun, having an afternoon meal or tea. We wandered briefly around and the atmosphere made us a bit hungry, so we decided to spend our Swedish Krona in a supermarket to get the best value for money. Carefully, going through the supermarket, I took out a calculator on my phone and computed the final cost of the food, and made sure that it wasn't more than we had bought. Had we exceeded the limit, I could have used my card, but the intention was to pay for the meal in cash. So, we made our way through the supermarket. Getting bread and cheese was a staple, so we went for those first. Fruits were a flare of extravagance, and perhaps a more humble selection of apple and pear would have cost less. However, Scandinavia had relatively cheap berries relative to Singapore, so we thought we'd shell out for some Blaubeers.. blueberries. But, then we saw the meats section and decided to reallocate money towards that so we had to downgrade the fruit.

When we went to pay, we wanted to go to the self checkout aisle to avoid the embarrassment of possibly overshooting our budget and having to not buy one of the items (which we decided in advance). We had to forgo water for this purchase, too. After scanning, turns out, we shot over the budget slightly and when we were too polite to ask the attendant to retract one item, it turns out my credit card didn't even work, and so it was a double sign. Return something back to the shelf, and go into the regular line. It was Swedish Jesus' way of telling us to spend less. We then took all of our food to a lawn outside of a church to, like the Swedes that day, soak in the wonderful sunshine.

As the clouds began to roll in, we made our way to the modern art museum but it had already closed -- by now, it was 18:00 and the sun was beginning to lose a bit of its glimmer, but, like any Western European summer, the sun actually set around 22:30. As the clouds continued to grow a bit, we decided to scrap plans of walking into the new development area of Malmo and head back to the train station. Luckily, we got back to the station just as the heavens opened and the weather we had been so accustomed to began to fall again. Thorin and I were itching for a dump, too, so we paid, get this, 20 Krona in total, to go to the toilet. Since we had paid that much, we took the shit of our lives, bought our tickets back into Copenhagen, and got on the next train and sat by the windows. There was something surreal about an afternoon trip to Sweden. We were glad that for the time there, the weather was great, and we were able to walk around town. Appreciate 'chu Malmo.

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