A morning in Malmö

My daughter needed to take the ACT test and here that means a trip to Malmö, about 1 1/2 hours from where we live. She was fine with taking the train by herself, but it worried me a little so I decided to go along. Not that I'm particularly useful-- I make her handle most transactions since she speaks much better Swedish than I do-- but I do have the credit card which could be helpful in an emergency and I could at least buy her lunch for when she was finished.

 

We headed out way too early for a Saturday morning and after a train ride, bus ride, and short walk found the school where she'd spend five lovely hours taking tests. I had a much more enjoyable morning-- just me and my camera doing whatever I felt like. It would have been nice to have a little sunshine and a little warmer temperatures, but I didn't get rained or snowed on so I felt fortunate.

 

I knew that nothing would be open at 8 a.m. on a Saturday so I was prepared to spend a large part of my day outdoors. The school was conveniently right across the street from the Malmö museum complex. It includes Malmöhus (an old castle), a number of other museums and lots of garden space. I joined the dog walkers and explored the paths through the gardens. 

 

Funky children's playground. Made me want to sing Hippie songs..

Or recite Dr. Seuss books.

 Lots of ponds, trees and ducks. What can I say? I was having fun playing with my camera. And as you can see, spring is slow coming this year so not much in the way of leaves or flowers.

The Turning Torso-- the tallest building in Sweden

The moat and a tower at Malmöhus. Harbor cranes in the distance.

 I wandered across a fish market on an inlet to the harbor. Not being a fish person, I did not buy anything, but the little cottages are very characteristic of fishing areas here.

 Once I'd exhausted the park, I headed into the old section of town. I love the extremely narrow cobblestone roads (when I'm walking anyway) and old buildings. I pretty much had the place to myself.

With the Mary statue on the corner, I expected
this to be an old church. But the sign described it as
a house built in the 1500s.

Looking out towards the harbor

The train station

City hall-- with a really strange statue out front.

No idea what this building is. I just think it is really pretty.

 I lucked out and found St. Petri, Malmö's oldest church, just as it was about to open. It is 700 years old. 10 AM seems to be when the city wakes up. The streets started bustling with people.

I loved all the flying buttresses

The center nave

Apparently the church was originally all painted like this, but
the ornamentation fell out of favor in the 1800s and was
mostly removed and the walls and ceilings painted white.

It only remains in this one small side chapel.

I've typically had no luck photographing stain glass windows.
They tend to wash out in the camera lens. But with this little chapel
I was able to get an indirect view and capture them a little bit.

Little views like this are why I love
roaming European cities

An old farm converted into a form and design center.

Don't know if this is a daily or weekly occurence, but Gustav Adolfs torg
had food stands from all sorts of countries set up-- British, Austrian, Italian, Spanish,
French, Greek.  Even Austrailian. All flying flags to show their country.

I was just crossing the canal when this group of kayakers glided by.



 



 So by this point I was finally feeling a bit cold and tired. I decided to take a break in the library and once again lucked out and arrived just as it opened. The library was a really fun building. It was half old castle and half modern glass with a fun cylinderical section connecting them.

The castle portion of the library, you can see a bit of the glass
on the right.

Inside the glass section was really sleek and modern. I really liked it and don't know if
I've ever seen such artfully arranged bookshelves.

 

 After a walk back to Pizza Hut to buy lunch (cannot go to Malmö without buying yummy AMERICAN pizza) it was back to Borgarskola to pick up my student and then a race to catch the train home. We didn't quite make the Öresundtåg and had to settle for the slower Pågatåg. Oh well, we saw some little towns we'd never seen before and I finally rode on a purple train.

An interesting church next to the school.