Malmo Sweden

Last week after speaking at the Öredev software developer conference in Malmo, Sweden, my wife and I had the opportunity to see some of the sights around town.

The weather there was pretty mild with highs around 45 of 50 degF and lows around 35 or 40.  It rained one afternoon and one full day while we were there, but the rest of the time it was partly sunny.  The cold wind never really settled down, though.  It was most definitely hat, gloves, and scarf weather.  And this “Florida boy” (Florida transplant, really) doesn’t even own a scarf!

Malmo is the third largest city in Sweden, but it’s not a huge city.  It’s about the same size as the city limits of Orlando Florida.  Not including the surrounding communities.  Just the city limits proper.  So imagine if you were driving away from downtown Orlando and as soon as you hit the city limit a few miles out, it became rural countryside.  That’s Malmo Sweden.

Malmo is located at the very southern tip of Sweden, which is a very very long country north to south.  Sweden is actually the same height as America, from the top of North Dakota to the southern tip of Texas!

This photo shows several hotels along the canal.  This area of town has lots of canals and waterways.

Here you can see the famous Øresund Bridge.  This bridge crosses between Sweden and Denmark.  Part of this bridge is over the sound (the strait) and part of it tunnels underground (and under the water).  We went over this bridge 4 times while we were in town.  It’s pretty cool.

The Øresund Bridge was the setting for the popular Swedish/Danish TV crime drama titled The Bridge.  I have not seen the TV show, but I’m told it is quite good.

Here is a photo taken from the beach of the famous Turning Torso building.  It is the first twisted skyscraper in the world!  It is mostly apartments, which is pretty cool for those residents!  It’s not cheap to live there!

Here is a closer view of the Turning Torso.

The below photo, taken from the beach, shows a building in the sound called Ribersborgs Kallbadhus, which is an open-air bath.  It’s basically a walled structure on the water with pool decks and stairs and ramps into the water for easy access  to swimming in the sound.  It also has saunas for quickly jumping from hot to cold and back.  Clothes are optional at places like this and my wife and I decided that it was not for us.    🙂

Also, it was quite cold.

I have one word for these people:  Pneumonia

Also I have one more word:  Shrinkage

Do women even know about shrinkage?

This is just a really cool looking office building that was across the street from our hotel.  It’s right outside the central train station entrance.

This bank building is also right outside the central train station entrance.  I thought it was a cool melding of modern or contemporary architecture and old or historic architecture.

Malmo’s Old City Hall building was beautiful inside and out.  We were honored to have dinner there one night with the other conference speakers.  But the facade was undergoing renovation, so it was mostly covered up.  We could only get a view of the below small portion of the historic and beautiful building.

This photo shows a typical view of the downtown area of Malmo.  We noticed that bicyclists in Malmo are highly regarded by city planners.  In many areas of the city, the bike lanes were quite impressive.  Most intersections even had a set of stoplights for the cars, plus a smaller set of stoplights for the bikes, and then a third set of crossing lights for the pedestrians.

Pedestrians are definitely third class citizens to the bikers.  If you accidentally walk in a bike lane, you are likely to get run over by a speeding bike!

Here is an example of the super fancy and super expensive desserts that you might find only at the most extravagant of dinner parties or expensive restaurants in Sweden.

Just kidding! This was just the display at a small bakery at the central train station!  Yeah.  Super fancy!

Below is a photo, at dusk, of Malmo Castle.  It’s basically right in the middle of downtown.  It’s surrounded by a moat.  And there is a museum inside.  Sadly, we arrived too late to experience it.

Speaking of arriving late.  We were in Malmo in early November and it got dark at like 4pm!  Southern Sweden and Denmark are at the same latitude as the southern parts of Alaska.  During the day, I never saw the sun get above what I would consider the 10am position in the sky!  By the time 6 or 7pm rolled around, we felt like it was 10 or 11pm!  Crazy!  This extremely early darkness hampered some of our tourism in the area.  And it definitely hampered a lot of our photography of the area.

There are several different open-air squares in Malmo.  In the square below, there were some nice big trees that were decorated for the holidays with large lights and large ornaments.

There are quite a few grassy parks in Malmo.  I noticed that many of them are actually cemeteries.  But unlike the cemeteries in the US that I’ve experienced, these cemeteries sequester their burial plots into small squares and leave room for walking and playing in between.  Interesting concept, sharing the grassy park with the deceased.  It seemed a little strange at first.  But I think I like the idea.

A large percentage of Malmo’s residents live in apartment buildings.  So gardening is totally out of the question for most residents.  Except for those that buy one of these garden plots.  It’s an area with small plots of land that you can build a tiny house or a shed on and you can grow grass or trees and bushes or even a full blown garden.

This is a beautiful church called St. John’s Church.  It has a very smooth and rounded architecture style.  I find it soothing to look at.

We went inside to see more beauty and were surprised that there was a wedding in progress.  I quickly and quietly snapped a photo of the interior before leaving quiet as a mouse.

This awesome church is St Pauli Church.  It has a large central tower surrounded by 12 smaller towers which represent Jesus and the disciples.  It has a very sharp and rigid and angular architecture.  It’s almost shocking to look at.

This is the Caroli Church.  It was created for the German population that was living in Malmo in the 17th century.  At that time, the Germans didn’t have a church in Malmo and had to attend church across the sound in Copenhagen Denmark.  Which back then was probably not real easy to get to.  This church was designed by the same architect as the St Pauli Church above and you can see the similarities.

One place that we tried but failed to see while we were in town was the Malmo Chocolate Factory and Museum.  But we got there sort of late.  Well, it was only 3pm on a Saturday.  But they had just closed.  So we missed that, which would have been pretty cool, we think.

Tomorrow I’ll publish a blog post about some more of the fun sightseeing that my wife and I did in Copenhagen Denmark!

Thanks for your interest!

Kurt