Not much to do in Malmo, Sweden!

Friday,I had a big day. A group of friends and I decided to trek it all the way across the Oresund Bridge and venture into the city of Malmo, Sweden. The 35 minute train ride to the city centre was quite enjoyable, and although the city itself didn't have a whole lot to offer, we really enjoyed ourselves on our day trip :).

Malmo is kind of the "sister city" to Copenhagen in a few ways. The Oresund bridge, finished in 1999, is the first and only bridge connecting Denmark to Sweden! Before that people always had to travel by ferry! A lot of people that live in Malmo commute to Copenhagen for work as well and the number of commuters continues to rise.

Although Malmo was nice, it really was just a smaller, less beautiful, more boring version of Copenhagen. I guess it is the commercial center of southern Sweden, however, it is undergoing a sort of transtition culturally and just opened Malmo University in the last 10 years to assist in this transition. They have some museums to offer and a few historical sights, but mostly it was just shopping, restaurants (I hear they do have fabulous places to eat), and some interesting architecture.

So, we arrived at the central station in Copenhagen around 10, purchased our tickets (we got a group discount!-YAY!), and arrived in Malmo around 11. When I stepped out of the Malmo station, I felt like I hadn't really left Copenhagen...the buildings, weather, people, streets are all very similar. We tapped into our touristy nature and grabbed some maps with labels "34 Must Sees of Malmo" bolded across the top. We were pretty psyched that there were actually 34 must sees in Malmo! (In all honesty, most of the must sees really weren't much to see at all, but we still had fun:)

We started by venturing to the "new" part of the city which supposedly had impressive architecture and a beautiful park. We sort of took a back alley, so our journey there wasn't all that appealing for the eyes, but we did make it to the famous Turning Torso. The Turning Torso is the tallest building in Scandinavia and the top most floor is actually twisted around 90 degrees in comparison to the bottom floor. It was quite pleasing to look at, but was actually the only impressive building we found in this so-called new part of the city. I'm sure we just took a wrong turn or slightly missed the interesting part of the city, but we reluctantly moved on back to the older city centre to do some more historical sight seeing.

A short walk, and a few funny touristy pictures later, we arrived in the older part of the city. Some pretty landscapes and parks dotted the way along our walk, but we had to really search for some of the important "must sees", sometimes missing them all together. We ventured to the Malmohus Castle, the oldest renaissance castle in Scandinavia, but opted not to go inside due to the fee and our lack of interest in the city itself haha. We continued on, and shortly after stumbled on a store bursting with American goodies!! YAYYYYYY! The store was dedicated entirely to American food, drinks, candy, etc...it was a little piece of heaven. But after glancing at the $10 box of cake mix, even our ridiculously overpriced Copenhagen food sounded appealing! We scooted out before anyone had the chance to accidentally impulse buy any $8 box of mac n cheese.

We were all getting a little grumpy as our stomaches started to growl, so we searched out a Swedish atm for some cash and found a cute little cafe for lunch. A $10 chicken sandwich later (although not worth 10 bucks, it was really gourmet and was served with unlimited fresh bread and dipping oil, so it was allright!), we were satisfied and ready for some more exploring.

We saw some old churches, splurged at the local Espresso House (starbucks equivalent in Malmo, they were everywhere), and posed with a giant rose at the Malmo Folkets Park (amusement park), and ventured to Malmo's famous chocolate factory/museum. This museum has quite the story behind it, let me tell you. We were totally pumped for this and were picturing some Hershey sized extravagant factory with oozing chocolate fountains and massive machinery churning out chocolate. Check out my pictures for an inside look and description at this stunning landmark...it really was just a room with some old chocolate wrappers and paraphanalia as the "museum", a small room in the back served as the factory, and the shop was simply a counter selling chocolate--and all this took place in the same room. It was quite disappointing, but we had a good laugh about it, and I have to say the chocolate was magnificent!

A pound of chocolate later and our bellies full once again, we had a few more stops before hopping on the train back to our beloved copenhagen. We stopped at the city hall which was quite beautiful and admired the statue of King Karl, the king who took Skane (southernmost part of sweden) from the Danes.

The city was enjoyable , the day was really nice, and more than anything a good bonding experience among us! I think we all left Malmo with an even greater appreciation of this city we are studying in (I know i did!), and were glad to be back "home" in Copenhagen. I was so anxious to hop on my bike from the central station and pedal home along the lakes to my apartment before getting ready to head off to my campus bar's "birthday party"!