Malmo, Sweden is across the Øresund Strait from Copenhagen, Denmark. The two land masses are connected by the Øresund Bridge since 2000.
Øresund Bridge – Wikimedia
The train from Copenhagen Airport to Copenhagen Central Station costs 36 Danish Krone ($5.40 USD) and takes 14 minutes. The train from the airport to Malmo Central Station takes 22 minutes at a ticket price of 89 DKK ($13.30 USD). The exchange rate is 6.70 DKK = $1 USD.
View from train on Øresund Bridge of wind mills in Øresund Strait.
I spent five nights in Copenhagen in July. I wanted to visit Sweden this trip since my last visit to Sweden was January 1993 when I was in Stockholm for a week to attend the founding convention for Education International. Stockholm in January is dark with only 7.5 hours of daylight. I was in a conference hall all day and only saw Stockholm in darkness, until my last day in the city when I walked all over in daylight. Summer daylight and greenery in late summer is a very different Sweden experience for me in Malmo.
Remembrance of days past
This is not my first time in this area of Malmo and Lund in the Skåne region of Sweden. I was here forty years ago when I was 15. My family lived in Germany for two years in 1974-75 when my father was a US Army helicopter mechanic stationed near Mainz, Germany. During those years my parents took us road camping around Europe during the summer months. They could not afford hotels in many of the places we visited, so we camped all around Europe as we toured London, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Copenhagen and many other places.
While camping in Copenhagen in 1975, we took a car ferry to Sweden for a day trip to Lund. I remember fondly my first impression of Sweden. I was looking through a telescope on the car ferry deck as we approached the Sweden coast. On the pier were hundreds of nude sunbathers. Wow!
Some things have not changed. I saw this article today as I researched Malmo.
SWEDISH CITY LEGALIZES TOPLESS BATHING….AT PUBLIC SWIMMING POOLS
Tomorrow’s weather forecast is rain. Perhaps I’ll go swimming.
Malmo Today
Most of what I know about Malmo was from today’s reading and a three hour walk around the city. Jetlagged after 16 hours on planes to get here, I looked up TripAdvisor.com Things to Do in Malmo as soon as I checked into my room and headed outside after a refreshing shower. Kungsparken at #4 looked like the right activity to walk off my jetlag. Oresund Bridge is #1 for things to see. I have seen that. Lilla Torg or Little Square is #2 on the list. I walked through the historic town square to get to my hotel.
Malmo’s Lilla Torg was originally built in 1592. Some of the oldest buildings in the square date to around that time.
What impressed me about Stockholm in January 1993 was the availability and high quality of fresh fruit and vegetables. I lived in Massachusetts at the time and the price of fresh produce cost less in Sweden than Massachusetts that winter.
Today, I passed by a farmer’s market in another Malmo city square on my way to the park. Of course it is summer now, but I am still impressed by the quality of produce at relatively low prices. The exchange rate is 8.41 Swedish Krona = $1.00 USD.
Nectarines 30 SEK per kg is about $1.62 per pound. What is your local U.S market price? My wife and I have eaten lots of nectarines this summer and that looks like a reasonable price to me.
Malmo’s coat of arms is a griffin, the body of a lion and head of an eagle with a crown and kind of a dragon look to the whole thing and dates to 1437.
Turning Torso, Tallest Building in Scandinavia
The tallest building in Scandinavia at 190 meters/623 feet is the Turning Torso in Malmo. The residential building by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has 54 floors and opened in 2005.
In July I wrote a piece Blondes in Black in Hot Copenhagen after seeing so many young blonde women in short black dresses on a hot Friday night. Malmo had a lot of blondes in black today too, except they were in long leg black jogging outfits running through the park. I was one of the few people walking around the city in shorts today.
We had a heat wave in Monterey, California last week in the 80s and I don’t think I brought sufficiently warm clothing for this week’s trip. Temperatures were around 90F in Prague and 80s in Copenhagen last week when I checked the weather. Now the temperatures are in the low 60s for the first week of September.
All in all this was a pleasant and restful day to hang out in Malmo, Sweden after a day of flying. The city is so quiet compared to the hyperactivity of Copenhagen in July.
Spending a lot of time up in the air is kind of a stamina challenge for me and flying 40,000 miles in one month will be hard on this body. I had a bloody nose in Dusseldorf after 14 hours on planes. That is rare for me.
I’m learning to fly again around the clouds.
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