Falsterbo

Chris' friend Matt from Swedish class and his wife Catrin invited us down to her parents' summer house in Falsterbo near the sea.  Matt was kind enough to pick us up at the train station in Malmö to make the trip a little easier.

We stopped at a small place right on the water owned by some Danes. They serve open faced sandwiches: smørrebrød in Danish, smørbrød in Norwegian, and smörgås in Swedish. These are a Scandinavian must.  The Swedish word smörgås is the same word that starts smorgasbord.  We tend to use smorgasbord as a word describing a really good spread of food.  Technically its a cold dish buffet and is very common in Scandinavia.  Smör means butter and most sandwiches here have butter on them.  These were really good.  Chris had pate, shrimp salad with hard boiled eggs, and fried fish.  The best part is that they were only about $2.50 each!

After lunch we headed to the beach.  It was an overcast day so we didn't sit on the sand, but we walked along the shore for quite a while.

Our walk took us past the church that Matt and Catrin had their wedding in.  While we were there we heard some people with very American English.  It's certainly something you tend to hone in on when you don't hear it often.

There are tiny little houses all along the beach that people can store beach supplies in.  Often when you buy a house in this area, it comes with a house.  They looked like dollhouses, and some of them were quite fancy.

Catrin really wanted us to try some Swedish crayfish, which most likely come from Japan, but it's how they prepare them that matters.  We walked back through the woods, to the car, and over to a harbor and different beach.

After the trip to the harbor we played a Swedish yard game called Kubb, aka Viking chess.  We had an awesome dinner of homemade salsa, fish tacos, and roasted peaches and ice cream for dessert.

When the crayfish came out, I said that's no crayfish, that's a lobster!!  It was huge!  We were instructed to jab our forks behind it's head and suck all the juice out; then flip it over and suck all the juice out of it's belly.  It was pickled, so the juice was kind of like pickle juice from the sea.  Next you take of the tail, get rid of the poop vein, and eat that meat.  They are so big you can even eat the claw meat.  I asked if she had some crackers for the claws, she said, "Just bite it with your teeth."  So I did!  It was good.

After an awesome day of new things, good food, and great company, we caught a ride to the bus and headed home.

Ven

Between Denmark and Sweden there is a Swedish island Ven.  A coworker had told me it was a lovely island where everyone biked around.  To get there, we took a bus to Lund, a train to Landskrona, a bus to the ferry station, and a ferry to the island.  We had considered taking our bikes with us, but the research showed that it was as much in ferry fees to take the bikes, as it was to just rent bikes there.  It seemed less hassle to just rent when we got there.  So we packed lunch and headed it out.

 Landskrona was a new station for us, but it was easy enough to figure out.  The bus stop we needed to get to the ferry was right off the platform.

It was a beautiful day, and lots of people had decided it was a good day to go to Ven.  The bus from the train to the ferry was so packed.  I have never been on a bus with so many people.  There were as many standing as there were sitting.

When you buy tickets for the ferry you have to purchase specific times for over and back.  Since there were so many people, a lot of the afternoon times were already full, but we were still able to have plenty of time to ride around get back for Charlie's dinner.  Here's the ferry and the queue.  I'm pretty sure most all of these people were on the bus with us.

It was a chilly ride over, but well worth standing outside, since the views were so pretty.

Coming up to the island, we could see lazy little seaside houses and a harbor.  There are people who live on the island year round, but also people who just stay here for the summer.  It is very common in Sweden and Denmark to have summer houses, most everyone does.  In July, when everyone is off work (for the whole month), they head to the summer house.

Once we got to the island we raced it up the hill to beat everyone else to the bike rental window, well Chris did most of the racing.  Good thing too, we were the last people to get bikes.  The others in line would just have to wait till some were returned.

Once we had our bikes, Chris made a plan.  Not that the island was huge or hard to figure out, but we didn't want to miss our ferry back home.

The island was really very pretty.  There were a lot of wheat fields and cottages.  The sun was bright and the wind was warm.  Unlike my bike at home, I could adjust the seat on this one, and I actually enjoyed riding around!

The bike path takes you along the edge of a cliff that borders the sea.  In parts it is very narrow, and the traffic is two way.  Since my biking skills aren't great often I would just stop and let others by, but it allowed for some great views.

After a couple of hours of biking it was lunch time.  There were plenty of places along the way to picnic.  We were lucky enough to find this table in the shade.

After lunch we rode through the "main" part of town, which was a couple of cafes and a museum dedicated to 1500's astronomer Tycho Brahe.  Pictures are lacking here, so I'll just end with some of the seaside cottages.  We will definitely go back to Ven with a few lessons learned, including reserving bikes online.

Charlie's big day

One of the things that Linda showed us was Ribban beach.  Part of the beach is dedicated to dogs! After seeing the dog beach, we knew we had to take Charlie to the beach! The weather was great again on Sunday, so we headed out.  As we got close, Chris let Charlie free from his leash and he was off.

We stayed about 2 hours and he swam pretty much the whole time.  He loved it so much!

 Like any good parent, we made our kid rest for at least a minute.  He was not happy about this.

...and begged to go back.

So in he went!

Charlie played so much that he was out like a light as soon as we got back on the train.

It was pretty nerve racking to keep up with him.  The area isn't fenced off at all, so you have to be pretty vigilant about keeping your dog out of the people section of the beach.  So by the end of the day, both momma and Charlie were worn out!

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!