Malmö

After a week's work back in Sweden, I started my summer holiday.  It is in the law that no company can deny an employee from taking up to 4 consecutive weeks vacation in June or July.  Most everyone has holiday during that time and a lot of it is for the entire month of July.  Since I had time to take, and no one was at work, I decided to take two weeks.  To kick off the summer holiday, we met a colleague of mine, Linda, who lives in Malmö for a tour.  We had been to Malmö a few times, but there's always more to learn when you have a native for a tour guide.  We met Linda at Starbucks at the train station, I believe there are only 2 Starbucks in Sweden, one here, and one in the Stockholm airport.  We started by taking the #3 city bus, which makes a loop around the outside of the city.  The first place we got off the bus was at this skate park, which also has some climbing rocks.

All of this area used to be under water.  There was a company here, who worked on ships, and they had a dock near here.  Most all of this next section of pictures was once under water, and not that long ago either.

The most prominent cityscape feature of Malmö is the turning torso.  It can be seen from miles away thanks to its height and Skåne's flat terrain.  The architect was imitating the torso of a man from the hips to the shoulders, as the body was twisted.

It really is a very interesting and unique building, but it seems to have just been randomly plopped in this area.  The first few floors are offices and the rest are apartments.  You aren't allowed to go inside the building unless you live in it, and none of the windows open, which is extremely rare here.  Everyone believes in the importance of lots of fresh air.

Continuing on with our walk toward the coast, we passed through an area of apartments surrounded by canals.  All this too, was under water.

Chris couldn't resist snapping a pic of this hippie family.  Just goes to show, there are hippies everywhere.

There is a beautiful water feature that runs like a river through this section out toward the sea.

This is the Øresund.  It is the stretch of water between Denmark and Sweden.  The larger bodies of water that create it are the North and Baltic Seas. The bridge that connect the two countries is a very recognizable structure from the west coast of Sweden.  It's too far to make out in this picture, but you can certainly see it in person.

There are 3 permanent houseboats in one of the canals.  They are covered in windows and this is a very busy part of the city.  I suppose it would be much like living in a zoo, where everyone could watch.

Apparently there was a famous soccer player that recently lived here.  This house is extremely close to the beach, in fact it is in the first row of houses up from the beach.  When the soccer player bought this house, he went to the owner, who did not have the house up for sale, and offered him a ridiculous amount of money.  The owner said, absolute!

We got on and off the #3 and made our way around to a few more areas of interest in town.

Remember this picture from our interview visit?

It was so cold when we took that picture we could only stay outside for just a few minutes.  The tour guide cut the tour short because she said it was too cold to be walking around.  This was the low point in the visit and we thought we'd never be able to survive here.  Look at us now!

A few squares away from the coast is this gem.

There is an excellent selection of hot sauces and jello.  They have marshmallows and Crisco vegetable shortening.  I wouldn't say it has a lot of "unique to the states" things, but there are definitely things in there we were happy to find like Tennessee Sunshine and Root Beer!

A big thanks to Linda for such an awesome afternoon!