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| Malmö Rådhus |
A large part of Monday was spent in Malmö, Sweden and enjoyable time it was, but first to the start of the day.
Early Morning
Monday dawned and I was up, as usual, at 5am. I uploaded last night's dinner photos to Flickr and sorted some other blog related items before Drew wakes at 7pm.
We have our usual coffees, then shower etc. Drop some clothes down for the laundry - especially Drew's clothes from the half-marathon - otherwise they might be too tangy for the case!!
The Journey to Malmö
We leave the hotel at 8.30am and walk across to the Central Station and buy a 24 hour return ticket for Malmö (and yes, we have remembered to take our passports.)
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| Swedish Ticket Machine |
The ticket machine offers Swedish and English language options, it is a Öresundståg train run by the Swedish train company. So, I guess the native Danes have to use one of the other languages? The tickets are 246 Swedish Kroner each, with a group discount (for 2 people???) of 98.4 SEK, very kind of them, this is the day return price which can be used as many times as required in the next 24 hours. Though we don't plan to pop back and fore more than once each way.
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| Copenhagen Central Station |
We catch the 9.07am train to Malmö which travels over the famous, five-mile, Øresund Bridge which gives its name to that great cop drama The Bridge - Bron-Broen - which plays on the fact that the two languages are related but not the same. As Drew has discovered when the Swedish word he knows is nothing like the Danish.
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| Train Time |
Like other efficient European trains, it leaves exactly on time and travels through a few Danish stations before arriving at Copenhagen Airport and then going over the Bridge.
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| Enjoying the ride |
The bridge is so much a part of the mythology of Danish and Swedish drama on TV and the novels I've read that it seems strange to be travelling along it. There didn't appear to be any dead bodies this time!!
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| The Bridge |
We stop at Hyllie Station for ten minutes which the Border Control rush through the train barely glancing at passports or ID cards unless someone doesn't have them in their hands, when they stop and check. Drew notes that border control here is managed by the Polis, not the Politi like the other side of the bridge, another example of the variation between the two related languages.
Triangeln
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| Escalators at Triangeln Station |
We arrive at Triangeln station at 9.45am. We stop here on the 'protip' advice of Visit Copenhagen. It really is an impressive space.
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| Triangeln Station from the Ground level |
We stop for breakfast in the Triangeln Shopping Centre at an Espresso House, which we had noted earlier in the week is a Swedish company, though it has branches in Denmark.
Drew made an excellent job of making the whole order in Swedish, his first time to use the language outside of his Duolingo app which he has been using for two years - as a lockdown activity.
He had Rågbröd med kyckling och rostad paprika (Rye bread with Chicken and Roasted paprika) and Focaccia med Ost and Skika (Focaccia with Ham and Cheese). The linguists among you may notice that the Swedish Rågbröd replaces the Danish Rugbrød (kyckling and kylling too). These were very tasty and at no point did Drew have to repeat his speech perfect Swedish.
As usual when asked to pay Drew pointed to me and I waved my phone. It is strange that I have only used my physical card once since arriving in the country (both countries) - to take a small amount of cash out at an ATM just in case on the first night - as it happens the just in case so far has been the collection at church yesterday. With that exception and one online purchase (The Danish-Jewish Museum) all my other transactions have been with Google Pay by waving the phone. I was never a fan of contactless when it was introduced for cards. But the phone feels more secure and the information provided in the app is often more than paper receipts ever provided.
St. John's Church
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| St. John's Church, Malmö |
We left the Triangeln Shopping centre and walked back out to the area from which we had exited the train station. In the square here is a striking church dedicated to St. John.
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| Church Door |
When we had arrived in Malmö the church was closed, but by the time we had eaten our snack it was open and welcoming.
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| Main Aisle |
The Church is very open and airy, very different to the churches we have come to know across the sound in Denmark. The Swedish Lutheran Reform Church clearly have a more liberal bent than their Danish brethren as for the first time this holiday, outside a Catholic Church, we got to see stained glass.
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| Stained Glass |
St. John's is known locally as the Rose Church and a quick look at the stained glass makes clear why! We gave up counting once we passed a 100 roses, but I'd estimate there was 350+ in various pieces of glass. The light which comes through the window makes the Art Nouveau style of the church look spectacular.
Bjørn Nørgård's Trinity
From St. John's we walked towards Malmö centre and were intrigued by a Danish sculpture which formed the centrepiece of a roundabout. This was Bjørn Nørgård's Trinity!
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| Treenighet |
Drew mocks me when I say I'm not a fan of modern art, but this sculpture is an example of the type of art that does nothing for me. I suspect some of the characters from Terry Pratchett's novels might have been used as the models for the statue - but what do I know, apparently it is a great piece of local street art!
Davidshall Bridge
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| Davidshall Bridge |
Malmö is a city full of water with canals and rivers penetrating to its very heart, so as we walked from the Trinity statue towards the town centre, we crossed the Davidshall Bridge, here we came across a piece of street art which I enjoyed. The peace called: "Way to Go" is a bronze sculpture by Åsa Maria Bengtsson which has the shoes of famous artists from Malmö modelled in bronze. The shows run from the very petite
to the huge
with lots in between, but it did mean I spent the evening today looking up all the names of the people whose shoe casts we photographed as we walked back and for across the bridge.
You can see the names of each shoe owner on the Flickr pages and can google them if you'd like to know more.
Gustav Adolfs Torg
After leaving the bridge we came to Gustav Adolfs Torg (torg is Swedish for square) this lovely square before you arrive at the centre of Malmö is full of interesting decor. From the decorated carvings on the buildings
to the symbol of a Griffin sitting on a ball of the world with frogs and other characters around him.
The square has a green area with a fountain and a memorial to Gunnar Faxe, who instead of funeral flowers asked his friends to remember him by planting beds of flowers here in the square.
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| Gunnar Faxe Memorial |
It is interesting to see such an open airy square in a city so far north. The Spaniards and Italians have wonderful plazas, but they also have the weather to enjoy it, perhaps living in a cold climate like Sweden's means the natives are either hardier than us Brits or more excited by the fewer days of summer to have a carefully cared for square that could easily be in Southern Europe, not in the North!
Centre
The City Centre of Malmö is another open torg called Stortorget (Big Square), this square has a statue of King Karl X Gustav in the centre. Karl (or Charles) the tenth was the King of Sweden in 1658 when Skåneland, the territory of which Malmö is the largest town was seeded from Denmark to Sweden following the Treaty of Roskilde between the two countries. It has remained Swedish ever since, though there have been a few battles over it since the original succession.
Stortorget includes on one side the Rådhus (town hall), on another a large branch of the Swedish Bank Handelsbanken, on the third the Governor's Residence of the region of Skåne along with plenty of shops and restaurants. As the weather was so pleasant, we strolled around the square and took in some of the delightful sights, including a statue of an orchestra
and another quite remarkably designed fountain with a history of Malmö along with other, less explicable items around it.
Castle
Having noticed on the map of the city that Malmö had a castle it was an obvious next step to visit it after leaving the town centre - and what a surprise. This isn't a castle in the Tyrolean beauty tradition, but a fortress that resembles a jail more than a castle, though in good castle tradition it does have a moat which goes all around it.
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| Malmö Castle |
The castle was clearly built for keeping people out and, while founded by the Danes, who didn't manage to resist the Swedes, since being in Swedish hands it has been a strong fortress.
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| Malmö Castle |
The third husband of Mary, Queen of Scots was one of its residents, during a time when he was being kept under guard by the Danes after he had been shipwrecked near Bergen and the Danish King Frederick II saw him as a potential dowry as he courted the English Queen Elizabeth (the first).
Sea and bridge
Leaving the Castle, the museum there is closed on a Monday, we walked towards the Sea and explored the new developments of the former docklands of Malmö which are now full of modern buildings which have been completed in recent years and many others that are still in progress.
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| Øresund Bron |
We came to the area called Steinstrand which provided some amazing views of the Øresund Strait and back to the Bridge which we travelled over to get here. Even though the Bridge had been in our minds a lot this holiday, given the programme mentioned earlier in this post, we had no idea it could be seen so clearly from Malmö nor that we would be able to get such marvellous views of it.
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| The Bridge |
Funny building - Turning Torso
In walking towards Steinstrand we had become aware of a very strange looking building
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| Turning Torso |
It appears its name is the Turning Torso and having seen it and photographed it at a distance we worked up to the building to see its amazing shape close at hand. It is a residential skyscraper, so we weren't able to go into the space, but its strange turning body was enough to make you feel a bit giddy from ground level.
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| Turning Torso |
It turns out that the distance view is actually more exciting than the close-up view, but we didn't mind the extra walk as it is such a pleasant day.
St. Peter's Church
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| St Peter's Church |
Having completed our visit to the newer developments in Malmö we strolled back along the river and headed towards the Church of St. Peter which is only a few blocks from Stortorget, but which had a service on when we had passed it earlier in the day.
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| St. Peter's Church |
St. Peter's is the original parish church of Malmö and has existed in its present location since the 1300s, though the main design of the current church was laid out in Gothic style in the 15th Century. Like many former Catholic churches taken over during the reformation there are signs of the original colourful decor hidden behind now fading whitewash in the side chapels of the church.
The church also shows the way the city has developed over the past, with the original floor clearly visible through glass below the current level of the church.
Back to Copenhagen
At 2.40pm we concluded our visit to Malmö by revisiting Stortorget and calling into a cafe called the Coffee Factory. I had an Americano and Drew and latte, they were delicious.
We left Coffee Factory at 3.30pm and reach the end of our lovely exploration of this delightful city, what a wonderful place, I'm so glad we took the time to come across the Bridge. We head towards the central station arriving at 3.40pm. The next train to Copenhagen is at 3.57pm.
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| Malmö Central Station |
We arrive, again, because we are in Scandinavia, perfectly on time at 4.34pm and walked back the short distance from the central station to our hotel. Time to rest and relax before planning for tonight's dinner - but more of that in my next post.
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