Tourists in Skåne

Friday was a mix of business and pleasure.  We needed to go to Malmö to do the biometrics for our Residency permits.  We wanted to pick up a rental car and T's company usually uses Hertz. The Hertz location looked a little ways out of town, but not too far, so we headed out to walk there.  Well, 3 miles feels farther than it looks.  45 minutes and a few blisters later, we finally arrived at the car rental place.  We walked a little past it because it was in the Volvo dealership and didn't have much of a sign.  Luckily we asked someone before we'd gone too far past it.  At that point, we were all happy to climb into our Renault station wagon and sit for a while.

The drive to Malmö was uneventful.  We did crack up a little trying to decipher some of the signs and there were a few crazy construction areas.  There were some cool moose crossing signs.  A swedish coworker informed us that they had trouble in the past with German tourists stealing the moose signs as souveneirs.

We enjoyed seeing the countryside of Skåne (pronounced Skona), the southernmost province of Sweden. We saw lots of farms, forests and windmills.

The kids were counting how many windmills they could see at a given time. It was often around 10.

And we saw this one picturesque antique.

We were a little concerned when we got to the Migrationsverket office and found there was a line to get into the building, but that line moved pretty quickly and then it was just like being at the DMV.  You were given a number and waited for your number to appear on an electronic sign.  About half an hour later, we were called back.  We had already done all our paperwork for our permits and been approved so they only needed to take our pictures and fingerprints. They had a cool machine that looked a lot like an ATM machine.  It took your picture and scanned your fingers.  It was all very easy and sure beat driving all the way up to the Swedish embassy in DC before we left (which was our other option). 

There are many immigrants in Sweden-- mostly Arabic but also some African, Serbian, etc.  They are dealing with many of the same issues and debates that the US is dealing with regarding Hispanic immigrants.

Once the business was done, we asked our GPS for interesting things to see in town.  We drove to an skyscraper called "The Twisting Torso." It was by the harbor so we also so a bunch of huge ferries unloading.

The Twisting Torso

We drove a little more around Malmö but it was a little large and intimidating, so we decided to head towards home.  We stopped at a shopping mall in the outskirts of town to have lunch.  We haven't really discovered what would be considered "Swedish" food.  Like in the US, they have Italian, Chinese, Indian, and lots of Arabic restaraunts.  We had Hawaiian Italian-style pizza from a store run by Arabs (the menus were in Swedish and Arabic).  We thought it a very multi-cultural meal!

On the way home, we stopped in the town of Lund. We parked along a street and were trying to figure out if we needed to pay to park.  In Malmö we'd learned, by watching someone else do it, that rather than put money into a specific parking meter, you went to little vending machine somewhere along the street, put in money, and got a ticket printed which you put in your car's windshield.  So in Lund, we were looking for something similar. We found a metal box and were all gathered around it trying to figure out how to pay for the parking when a lady comes by and says something to us in Sweden.  We were like, "Sorry, no Swedish" and then she laughed even harder and said, "I was just wondering what you were doing with the post box?" We all got a good laugh then and she showed us where the parking vending machines were and also gave us tips on what to see in town.  We have met so many helpful, friendly people who are patient with stupid Americans!




The biggest attraction in Lund is there cathedral.  It is a beautiful stone building constructed sometime around 1100 AD and it is amazing. M loved it! It's hard to capture the enormity of it in photos.

Cathedral in Lund



 Lund is the home of one of Sweden's oldest colleges.  We enjoyed walking through the campus and seeing all the old buildings.  Then we visited the Botanical gardens and saw lots of beautiful flowers.