Malmö, Sweden

Woke up to an overcast day but still so beautiful to look out the large windows in the upstairs bedroom where I slept and see the orange rooftops that seem to be everywhere across the city. 

Elke kindly made yummy eggs with more fresh bakery rolls and cheese for breakfast with some great grain bread and I got watch her two bunny rabbit pets, Amy and Lemmy play around the living room. They're so sweet but don't let you pick them up. Here is a picture of Lemmy, he's a mixed breed and partial lion face rabbit.

After breakfast we were off to catch the train to Malmö, Sweden which is only about 25 minutes from Copenhagen.  The train goes over the famous

Öresund or Øresund Bridge "(Danish: Øresundsbroen, Swedish: Öresundsbron, joint hybrid name: Øresundsbron) is a double-track railway and dual carriageway bridge-tunnel across the Øresund strait between Scania (southernmost Sweden) and Denmark. The bridge runs nearly 8 km (5 miles) from the Swedish coast to the artificial island of Peberholm in the middle of the strait, then a 4 km (2.5 mile) tunnel to the Danish island of Amager. The Øresund Bridge is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe, and connects two major metropolitan areas: Copenhagen, the Danish capital city, and the major Swedish city of Malmö. It connects the road and rail networks of Scandinavia with those of Central and Western Europe," according to Wikipidea.

The sun was shining as we approached the bridge and pretty much the whole time we explored the charming city. We basically just walked for 3 hours and looked at great old buildings some for the 15th Century and forward. And lots of interesting public art like the life-size bronze statues of a marching band that you can see me beside in the picture. And a huge 2 story tall white lamp with flowered lampshade. Elke is in the picture pretending to pull the light switch cord. It's a city blending old world architecture, cobblestoned streets and progressive and contemporary art and architecture. They also have wonderful parks, a few small lakes and canals where we even saw a person out kayaking (keep in mind it was around 20 degrees today, crazy!)

 

We had a wonderful lunch at Hollandia, the oldest bakery in Sweden opened in 1903 and had the traditional Scandinavia open-faced sandwiches, I had smoked salmon, yum, yum! And a lemon tart even more yum, yum!!!

 

 

It was also a nice surprise to see that they had kept up all their Christmas decorations including a large tree with extra-large multi-colored Christmas gift lights towering over a fountain with a man and women now covered in large icicles. you can see the day picture with the fountain and then the shot of the tree around 4pm after the sun set and the box lights come on. Elke was also telling me that Christmas in Denmark and I guess probably all of Scandinavia is more festive than Germany because they have fun ways of celebrating including dancing around the Christmas tree and then there are the "Nissens" and as I found out online their relevance to Christmas is describes as "When American children wait for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, they expect him to arrive alone, without the elves who help him make his Christmas gifts. But in Denmark, children wait for the elves instead! The Danish gift-bringers are called the nissen, small gray-haired creatures who look much like elves and are supposed to be 4,000 years old. Danish families put out a bowl of porridge for the nissen during their visit. But in modern times, Julemand, the Danish version of Santa Claus, is becoming more popular. So the nissen have a lot less porridge to eat on Christmas Eve." I just happened that I was drinking tea from a mug Elke purchased at the Tivoli amusement park here in Copenhagen at one of their Christmas markets and the mug was covered with pictures of some of these nissen. Here is a picture I found online of the Nissen from an old Christmas card.

 

And on the subject of Tivoli Garden I won't be visiting it as it's closed for the season but in case you come to visit here it's described as "Tivoli Gardens (or simply Tivoli) is a famous amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park opened on August 15, 1843 and is the second oldest amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klampenborg. With 3.963 million visitors in 2011, Tivoli is the second most popular seasonal theme park in the world, the most visited theme park in Scandinavia and the fourth most visited in Europe, only behind Disneyland Paris, Europa-Park Rust and the Efteling." The picture here I found online and is of the Tivoli Garden ice skating rink at Christmas.

At the train station we had to wait for the commuter back to Copenhagen so we had about 15 minutes to sit in the incredible clean, modern facility and watch a very interesting art exhibit show a series of moving images traveling across the station walls as if you were on a train in these locations. Very interesting and mesmerizing and a great way to keep waiting passengers distracted as they wait. I took a picture of the plaque about the work and the artist and found the following online:  “Elsewhere” by Tania Ruiz Gutierrez  - “Elsewhere is a multi-projection video art work which seeks to transform the reinforced concrete landscape of the Malmö underground station into a wide open space. Through a projection device that evokes the perceptual experience from the train, the viewers will be invited to lose themselves in images during their wait. The projections acting as windows, the station itself becomes a train that loses its spatial and temporal rails, itinerant across the earth. A connection between the city and the entire world - From the salt flats of Uyuni to the roads of Saigon, from the plains of Siberia to those of Patagonia, from the Honshu-Shikoku Bridge to the Orinoco River to central Montreal to the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro to Johannesburg’s Soweto to a Kensington street to Oaxaca market to Plaza Mayor to the Sicilian coast to Jalpur to Alexandria … the Malmö C station will travel the world. Annorstädes, like a lost river, flows continually into an underground passage. It is said that one never steps in the same river twice; comparably, the Annorstädes installation is elaborated in such a way that it is unlikely that a viewer on a fixed schedule will see the same image time and again. In terms of tempo, Annorstädes is conceived as a release for the individual viewer. The recorded images are slowed down, in contrast with the speed of everyday urban life, in order to ease the experiential flow of time. In symbolic terms, this artwork highlights the importance of the Central Station as a node; in its

primary sense, as a crucial railway link, but also metaphorically as a connection between the

city and the entire world.”

We took the train back to Copenhagen and had a very nice dinner, Elke made pasta and watched a movie, very relaxing and the bunnies got to just run and play around the living room.

 

A little history on Malmo from the internet: " Malmö's first inhabitants lived a short time at Segebro, where the remainings from an 11 000 year old Stone Age settlement was found. It was a group of hunters who lived in an arctic climate, living a nomad life in their hunt for reindeer, moose, bear and wolves.  At that time Sweden, Denmark and Europe were connected by a land bridge but with time the land was separated by water and fishing became an important industry. Salted herring was the main product of export for hundreds of years. The culture prospered and several remainings from the iron- and bronze ages have been found, especially in Fosie.  They were influenced by Celts, Romans and Greeks and started to travel abroad even before the Vikings started to explore the world."

Bye! Hamburg, Germany/Hello! Copenhagen, Denmark

Had an early wake up call at the hotel to be sure that I had time to shower, eat some pistachios I'd bought at the grocery store for breakfast and then off to the train station across the street to get my 9:28am train. I was there very early, luckily because they cancelled the train which was to go direct to Copenhagen with just a few stops in Germany and Denmark along the way. The train station

The staff directed me to a bus that was outside that would take all the passengers to a ferry which would then take us to Denmark and bring us to train that would then take us directly in to Copenhagen.

At first, before I knew about the ferry, I was getting anxious but then a ferry ride always gets me excited so I just sat back and relaxed and enjoyed the scenic ride. There was only one other lady on the platform when I was heading for the train and I stopped to see if she was waiting for the Copenhagen train as well and I guess no one bothered to tell her it was cancelled because she was just standing there like nothing was going on. So from that point on she watched out for each other to make sure we didn't miss any connections. She spoke English and French only and was originally from Africa but has been working in Europe for about 10 years and most recently has spent 4 years working in Rome as a home health aid. But since work has become more scarce in Rome she decided to go and stay with her sister who lives and works in Copenhagen. I felt bad for her since she had left the day before took the train from Rome to Milan and then another train to Frankfurt and then another to Hamburg where she was suppose to connect to the direct to Denmark. But all was well and she seemed no worse for ware when we arrived in Copenhagen around 4:05pm, an hour and a half late, and her nephew was there to greet her. It was very nice to meet the lady, whose name I now can't remember and to have someone else to have gone on the mini travel adventure with.  She also asked a nice German women when we were waiting for the train connection in Denmark if she could use her cell phone to call her sister to let her know we'd be late and that same German women kindly let me use her cell to call and let my friend Elke, whom I'm staying with for the few days I'm here, know that I'd be late as well. People can be so kind and the women said it was her company phone form Germany so she was happy to let us use it.  Even when I got to Copenhagen two nice young ladies let me use their phone to call Elke because I couldn't find her in the large, albeit pretty (they have two huge chandeliers in the main area) station.

Just an added note about one of the towns we passed on our way by bus to the ferry because it looked so beautiful from just a quick glimpse as we stopped at their bus station to pick up a few more passengers. If ever you're in the Northern part of Germany and/or taking the ferry to Denmark this might be a good place to stop for a day two. " The Hanseatic City of Lübeck (pronounced [ˈlyːbɛk], Low German is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. Situated on the river Trave, it was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League ("Queen of the Hanse") and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. In 2005 it had a population of 213,983."


Elke is a friend from New York or at least she was living there for 4 years while she worked at the German Consulate General. She is from the Frankfurt area and every 4 years she is transferred to a new post so a year and half ago she moved to Denmark so I'm very happy to get to see her again and her apartment, not far from the train station is so lovely with an upstairs second bedroom where I'm staying which has the most incredible view of the city and even a patio. It's a little too cold to be sitting out there now but it's still so beautiful.

Elke made a nice salad for dinner with wonderfully fresh, delicious rolls she picked up at Lagkagehuset Bakery which, according to Elke is the best in town and has several locations throughout the city. She also got two yummy desserts to share a chocolate and marzipan creation and a unique cupcake-type treat.

After dinner we headed back out to take a bus to the theatre. Elke organizes meet up groups online for international people who are living here and one group for only German speaking residents. So tonight she had already had a meet up organized to for the international group to go see a show a traditional British Pantomime performed by an English theatre group who have a great off-Broadway-type space about a 10 minute bus ride from the center of town. The Copenhagen Theatre Circle (CTC) is an amateur theatrical society with performances and events taking place in English. The CTC is open to all who have an interest in being on stage, working behind the scenes and supporting in numerous other ways. It was a fun show and I'd heard about these pantomimes when I was in England and they have them in just about every city in Britain and it's just the thing to do after Christmas as I was told so I'm thrilled I actually got to see one. I had to look up what a Pantomime is since I, Elke and some of the others who attending the show last night from her group thought it had to do with mimes. " Pantomime (informally, panto) – not to be confused with the theatrical medium of mime – is a form of musical comedy stage production, designed for families, developed in the United Kingdom and mostly performed during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, slapstick comedy and dancing, employs gender-crossing actors, and combines topical humour with a story loosely based on a well-known fairy tale. It is a participatory form of theater, in which the audience is expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.  Pantomime has a long theatrical history in Western culture dating back to classical theater, and it developed partly from the 16th-century commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy, as well as other European and British stage traditions, such as 17th-century masques."

 

I met some of her very nice friends, one young man from Odessa, Ukrane working here, a young lady, this guy's friend, who is from St. Petersburg, Russia and also working in the Denmark. I thought they were a couple and I actually think they may be some day but they met it seems on one of these meet up group gatherings. Also there was a women Manuella, a German women who was working for the Post office in Germany and then transferred to work for the Post office here in Copenhagen but got laid off recently due to the decrease in people sending mail and using email instead. She was very nice but difficult to understand her English with her thick Bavarian accent. Even Elke said she can't understand her when she's speaking German either her accent is so bad. Elke's boss Hedwig was there as well and so nice, she's a director for the German Embassy and one other women who is from Singapore and doing a 2 month consulting job here and has been going to the meet up groups to be introduced to new people and just have something to do while she's in the city.

 

It was a very nice evening and the show was fun; silly and crazy but fun. And there were some very talented cast members but some were clearly amateurs. But the theatre is great in a neighborhood very much like a small Harvard Square.

 

We went after words to a cocktail lounge called Kitjen which was packed and we didn't stay too long as it was getting late but it was nice to chat with the members of the group.

 

After a quick bus ride back to the center of town we were in Elke's apartment and I was off to bed in the upstairs room.