Malmo

After fun & games for the later part of this past week, I reverted back to my pied piper mode and organized a trip to Malmö, Sweden. Per usual it was poorly planned as I did not take into account that people in general are not as fluent in English as the people in Copenhagen generally are. In addition, I failed to take a map with me. Did not even bother to ask my friends to bring one with them since i figured whatever stop we got off on would have maps that we could just pick up. Well intended as these things were, they backfired and we ended up having an extremely entertaining experience and by end of the day, a well lived one worth writing about.
Downfall #1, we did not get it together to make the train we initially were going to take.
#2, did not tell Mercer (a classmate who was going to meet up with us at a later time) where to get off and where we were going to be.
#3, got off at the wrong stop altogether: took the first Malmo stop, which is nowhere close to the main city center. Needless to say, an interesting experience geting to the main center via taking a bus where the bus driver did not know any English and us not even quite knowing which stop to get off at downtown. Oh, did I mention, we did not even have a set plan as to where we wanted to go in the first place?
#4. totally forgot phone was going to roam at an international rate. So had to communicate via text message with Mercer and it was indeed an interesting process trying to locate her. Amazing how much we rely on technology and take it for granted overall.

Despite all the Mayhem that happens anytime I decide to take charge (or at least appear like I have it all together), it really did end up being a pleasant day. I did some research on Malmö for Professors Chan's history class last semester, so it was great seeing the space present day and how some of the city spaces evolved overtime. The Stortorget (big square) & Lilla Torg (little square) were definetely areas I wanted to see in person in addition to going through the amazing bridge that connects Malmö to København(Öresund bridge), the Turning Torso tower (Calatrava's creation) and the renaissance castle (Malmöhus Castle).

I must admit, the Malmöhus Castle was a pleasant surprise. Now a musuem, it houses all sorts of exhibits from history to art. The exhibit on the plague and prisoners (it was actually used as a prison at a point) were actually pretty great. The most impressive thing was instead of making the spaces & architectural details of the castle main focus (which they totally could've gotten away with), the exhibits themselves were primary focus with some brief notes at a corner of significant rooms. The architecture was used as part of the journey so the experience was very interactive. Best thing was, it was free today! YAYY for being so disorganized.


Afterwards, I went on a search for a towel as I want to go to the beach tomorrow and since everything is closed on Sunday (and I have no decent towel since the one DIS gave me is pretty crappy), I went on a mission to find a store that would sell towels. Did not realize how difficult this would be. Anyways, not sure how to justify this but I ended up spending almost 400 Swedish Kroners on a towel (i'm thinking over 50 bucks USD). It was 4:59pm, the shops close at 5pm, and it took SO long to locate a store to find a towel that by the time the cashier told me how much it was, the towel seemed like it was priceless after all that hard work. So this whole being unprepared and living for the moment deal that I'm trying to pull off is working only part of the time :-( Oh well, atleast I have a great story.

Back in Denmark in one piece....whew. The worst/best part is, most of the friends I made are spacey as I am. Needless to say, I see the next few weeks with them being nothing but entertaining for that reason alone!