You can even see Malmö (on clear days) from various spires around Copenhagen, across
Øresund. When I lived in Copenhagen, I kept intending to visit Malmö, but the tickets there and back seemed so expensive (which is easy to think, because the prices appear an order of magnitude more than they ''are'' (since 1 euro ~ 7.5 dkk) ).
So, this time when I went to Copenhagen, I made actual plans to go to Malmö the day following the conference, by train. The main attraction of Malmö is Malmöhus (Malmö Castle), where a bunch of little museums are stored, and the old city (Gamel Stad).
Getting into Malmö:
Here's the first bit in Swedish I saw (looks a bit different from Danish):
Checking into the hotel, I was amused by the brand name of the toiletries:
In true Scandinavian form it was, of course, raining. The hotel had had a good idea and planted really nice roses outside their front door which still looked nice in the rain:
Walking towards the main/old city, just south of the main train station was a sort pillar that had tourist info. Touch-screen/interactive tourist info. I was impressed. It was impossible to take a picture of, though:
Malmöhus Castle
The moat/rivers surrounding the castle had, in the pouring rain, people on a kayak tour. Hardcore (that is, still going on this kayaking adventure, in the rain):
As I crossed the bridge, I took the ''quintessential'' picture one sees of Malmöhus, which makes it look as grandiose as possible:
From the outside it really doesn't look that ''castle''-y to me, honestly. Outside of the moat. I mean, clearly, first step to a ''real'' castle is the moat.
Bridge to main entrance, complete with silly old-fashiony uniformed people who would at regular intervals march across said bridge and around the grounds to the beat of a drum:
I enjoy that people in Copenhagen and now Malmö have felt the need to paint things with bright colors. Example:
I'd say the corridors are more castle-like (sorry for the blur, low-light):
Inside the Castle/Slot/Slott/Schloß, one could rent audio guides, which I did. Sadly, the first leg of the museum (Ancient Malmö (i.e. Vikings)) had no audio guide stations, so I just wandered around amidst the things and the signs in Swedish. I took one picture, of this surprisingly finely toothed comb from Viking-era (900 or so CE)
And nearby was...viking Jesus?
There was also a room or two's worth of what was probably the part of the museums that actually changed regularly (i.e. the ''special exhibits''). This was on fashion between the two World Wars and how these changed lives. Stuff on women wearing men's clothing and fashion becoming generally more androgynous. It also included the following:
Also, some cool German money from the time (50 million Deutschmark bills!):
There was also a sub-museum on the founding of Malmö and the history of Skåne (~Sko-nuh), the region containing it.
I think this was the first city charter:
Smör (Swedish) = Smør (Danish) = Butter
Glas (Swedish) = Glass (English)
Salt (Swedish, Danish, English) = Salz (German)
Although:
Glass (Swedish)= Is (Danish) = Eis (German) = Ice Cream [I blame the French for this one, since the French for ice cream is creme glaceé or so]
Cool old map of Denmark, when it contained Sweden and Norway (under the reign of Erik of Pomerania):
And a cute model of the castle and moat:
The audio guide said that this view (now of a parking lot and Malmö) used to be of the ocean, when Malmö was an active castle. As Malmö has grown, they've filled in land.
Malmöhus was a castle/fortress and at some point it was a prison, and post-WWII it became refugee camp. Here is the "Hall of Nobility". The chandeliers were made by prisoners during the time when Malmöhus was a prison, but nothing else is 'original', just pictures and furniture from the correct time period (1500s-1600s):
Among the portraits was this one of Mary, Queen of Scots. Her 2nd husband was indicted in murder of first, fled to Sweden, was captured and imprisoned here. Never did manage to get back to Scotland (I think he died in prison before that happened).
In the nearby (King's) chamber was a very old, small bed:
The really old bed was short because ( even pre-dating Jefferson, who brought this idea back with him to the states after visiting Europe) nobility thought if they slept laying down (like the dead), they would catch terrible illnesses:
So, the castle had been a prison, and there had been executions. The head executioner for a while seemed pretty at peace with his job. There was a guy who was guilty of some grisly murder who was, I think, the last person executed here, and this is a translation of what the executioner had to say about this (I guess he had a journal?):
About to be all museum-ed out, I turned a corner and saw the signs pointing towards an aquarium.
Besides jellyfish, they had a ''nighttime animals'' room, with an enclosure for bats that was maybe the size of a small bedroom. I felt bad for the guys. They also had scorpions that glow under UV light.
As the rain finally appeared to give up, there was a chance to get a rain-free tour of the city by boat. I'd liked the one in Copenhagen, so figured this would be a nice way to see a bit more of Malmö.
Tour by boat through the canals
While waiting for the tour to start, here's the view ahead. The building center-ish past the bridge is probably the Radhus/Rathaus/Town Hall, based purely on its resemblance to the one in Copenhagen.
It was certainly a beautiful day in Malmö harbor...
Here's was the view of Malmö's Gamel Stad/Altstadt/Old part of town:
As we moved into the harbor, we passed by these replicas of old cogs. The larger is a replica of the largest cog (that ever was?). There were also little replica-looking huts around it. I don't know what that was about.
We passed under a bridge topped with a weird thingy. The dark green is apparently "Malmö Green", specially chosen by the city, and the other is just some blue-green.
We approached Malmöhus by water, to be greeted by what looked like a house that had washed into the canal:
Turns out, it was an art installation. The title is "Atlantis". The tour guide made a quip that if you can't afford the rent at the Turning Torso (I'll mention this later), you could always try this place :P.
Random houses along the canal:
The park on the left there is a cemetery, and the town leaders had wanted to demolish it and turn it into a parking lot/garage. The inhabitants protested, it wasn't paved over, now it's just a really nice pretty green place by downtown(ish) Malmö.
So, on the boat were laminated maps/guides with texts in other languages (Mainly German or Italian, it looked like). One bullet point said something like "die Katzen und Wasserfälle
wurden installiert " (the cats and waterfalls were (then) installed). This had to be a mis-translation, right?
Wrong.
Waterfall:
Cat:
The cute story about the following place is that it's called the Latin school (it's a very old highschool), and apparently when it was built it was done so with the help of some money from the Pope at that time. However, it's a secular school (now, for sure). When time came (within the last century) for the place to get some much needed repairs, they had no money and decided well, let's write the Pope. Who said sure, have some money for repairs.
The (also very old, maybe first?) firehouse has a nice story as well. The architect (& guy in charge of the place, I think) died in a scandalous way. He was found dead in his bathttub with his 16 year old mistress. A gas leak killed them both, apparently. The gas company and girl's family both sent flowers for the funeral.
The following tower is atop some other old building. At the time it was built, these (there were multiple towers atop the thing, all of the same sort) were compared to the "Invalides" dome in Paris:
I'll just leave a picture of said dome here and you can make your own conclusions...
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| Invalides Dom in Paris |
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Here's our nice Swedish tourguide with the royal mill behind her, who gave the entire tour in both languages (Sentence in Swedish, sentence in English, the whole time).
Gamel Stad (Old City)
The aforementioned
Turning Torso, viewed through the clouds/fog:
Incredibly expensive, not open to the public to climb up into and have a look around (sadly).
Here's a blip about it (ala wikipedia):
"[It] is the tallest skyscraper in Sweden and the Nordic countries..
. Upon completion, it was the tallest building in Scandinavia, the tallest residential building in the EU and the second tallest residential building in Europe, after the 264‑metre (866 ft) Triumph Palace in Moscow."
Because people are crazy,
here's a video of a guy jumping from a helicopter to the top of the building and then to the ground.
On to the rest of the city.
In terms of taking my scarce Danish knowledge and applying it to Swedish, was pretty clear that Strøget becomes Strotorget in Swedish, and the associated street was the main kitschy pedestrian-only area. Here's a nice building from there:
Here's some more pedestrian-only space:
Walking away from there were old buildings in clusterings here and there:
Here's another cool old buiding:
A note about Swedish. Saint is abbreviated "S:t" instead of "St.", which honestly makes a lot of sense.
Here's a church that looked neat:
Here's one of the two main churches (S:t Petri (Peter) or S:t Paul):
Complete with a nice door (I really like the black-and-red brick thing it's got going on):
And what would a trip to Sweden be without eating at a Latin American restaurant (next to said church). Here's what's on the menu:
Based off this, I assume that we have
Danish => Swedish
Kylling => Kyckling [chicken]
økske => ox [beef]
lille => liten [little/small]
[I looked up "Tallrik" (plate) and "Lyx" (luxury) out of curiosity just now]
I also really enjoy that they describe empanadas as "Chilean pirogies".
The food was...ok. It wasn't spectacular. What *was* great was that amidst the sauces that one could apply to their food was also a tub of lingonberries/lingonberry compote.
On the topic of food, I found this in a small supermarket and quickly took a picture. "Ost" is cheese:
I'll close with two photos I quite liked, which I took as dusk was starting to settle in. Here's more historic buildings in Malmö:
and the central train station area:
