An Excursion to Malmö

Today, I went on a trip to Malmö, Sweden with several of my DIS friends. We went because we needed to do some winter shopping, and it is much more affordable than in Copenhagen. The exchange rate is better, and the taxes are lower, so it was defiantly worth the trip. A train ticket costs about $25, so it doesn’t take much to make the trip fit into your budget. We took the train from Copenhagen, and about forty-five minuets we were in Sweden. The train goes through a tunnel partway under the water, and the rest of the way it runs on a bridge. Once we were in Malmö, we found a map that would lead us to the shopping areas of the city. We walked down the main pedestrian street (something like Strøget in Copenhagen), and we stumbled upon an international food fair. Much to our surprise, it was the same fair that was at Gammeltorv (in Copenhagen) just a few weeks ago. We even recognized some of the same salespeople. It seems they travel from city to city in the summer, and Malmö happened to be right after Copenhagen. We all got lunch, and ate on a bench in a small square next to a cemetery.

We eventually found our way to a large mall, which had a bunch of very nice stores. The prices we very reasonable, much like what you would find in the United States in a nicer department store. However, the sizes are all over the place. It seems that there is really no standard, as sometimes they were much larger than in America, while other times they were not. I ended up finding two shirts, a sweater, a nice winter coat (for my trip to Russia), a scarf, and gloves. I should be set for the winter now, with the exception of some warmer boots, which I think I will try to find a little later in the year.

Overall it was a nice trip to Sweden, and was very much worth the time and travel expense. I would like to go back sometime to see some of the architecture and history of Malmö, as I didn’t have time to see much today. Door-to-door, the trip was a little over 12 hours for me, partly because I live so far from Copenhagen, and took the busses today instead of biking. There was somewhat of a delay in the train back to Copenhagen, but we are not sure why, as the announcements were in Swedish. At one point, we were actually on the wrong train, thinking it would take us to Denmark, when it was really going deeper into Sweden. Luckily, we weren’t the only ones to make the mistake, and we all got off before the train left the station.

I have a fairly quite Sunday ahead of me. My host family is visiting London this weekend, so I am just going to take it easy tomorrow. My week also looks pretty easy. However, I am leaving for Lithuania on Sunday, so I defiantly have something to look forward to. To end with, here are some photos of one of the main squares in Malmö, right by the train station.