Sweden for a day? Ok!

        So there is this super cool thing about København...it's only 35 minutes away from Sweden. And that means it is incredibly easy to just hop on a train and spend a day there, which is exactly what I did yesterday.  Let me tell you, nothing makes you forget you have school work to do like walking around a very old castle, exploring shop after shop full of cute European clothes and drooling over delicious food and chocolate.  Earlier in the week one of my friends from DIS, Caitlin, asked if I wanted to go to Malmö and since I didn't have any field trips yesterday (Wednesday) I enthusiastically said yes.  We left Copenhagen around 11:30 am and crossed over some water (and by 'some water' I really mean the Baltic Sea) and by noonish we were Sweden.

   

Behold, the Baltic Sea (and the bridge)

view from the train

First item of business was to get a map because we actually knew nothing about the city.  We managed to find the tourist center where we picked up a lot of brochures and a few maps. Then we wandered around until we found a cute little cafe where we could have some lunch, scan the helpful information (all in Swedish!) and make a plan for the day.

  

Is it ridiculous that I wanted one of everything?

     

The city of Malmö is very quaint. We wandered around a few streets pausing at cute shops and buying souvenirs.  Here are some of our adorable Swedish findings (don't worry we didn't buy all of these things, we simply gawked at their awesomeness):  

Choclate dinosaurs. Oh my. 

Can you guess what this phone is?

Mmmwa!

Pardon my...swedish??
This is a game, by the way. Looks fun, right?

HA. Love this.

Are these not the most adorable horses?

We eventually decided to be a little more cultural so we headed for the castle/museum, Malmöhus.  We accidently took the long way there, but that meant we got to see the Turning Torso, the tallest skyscraper in Sweden (upon completion it was the tallest building in Scandanavia...not sure if that is still the case or not).

  

A year later (or so it seemed by the amount of wind that blew in our faces) we finally got to the castle/museum.

 We totally had to cross a moat to get in. The whole thing turned out to be really cool. The museum part was all in Swedish, unfortunately, so all we could do was look but it was still fascinating.  There were models of the life and architecture from centuries ago.
Apparently this is the only picture I took of the museum part:

 Then we got to the actual castle part. It's hard to imagine that this is where royalty lived because it is not exactly fancy according to our standards, but I guess that just goes to show how different things were back then.

Cannon tower. Hundreds of years ago, there would have been a cannon where I was standing. Cool.

I'm pretty sure this says Norske Love ;) 

You point at me, I'll point at you.

Up to the King's "apartment":

Waiting hall for those who wanted to see the King

I think I need some pants like this.

The King's bed? I would've expected it to be much bigger so either they did away with the giant royal bed or this was it. Hmm. 

Next we somehow found our way to the section that used to be the prison.  Fascinating...and slightly creepy. 

  

We honestly don't know what this room was about, but it was all mirrors and stars and induced a major feeling of dizziness and discombobulation as soon as you stepped in.

Translated: Man with power!?
We both walked through the Ja (yes) side. Go us.

The castle trip turned out to be totally worth it; we were both very happy we went.  On the way back we saw these birds and thought they kind of looked like ducks...and geese.  Duck duck goose?

 

Beautiful Swedish architecture

Wandering through the streets, we came upon this marching band and thought we'd join in. 

After more shopping and convincing each other to get the super cute foreign clothes we found at a swanky shop, we ended the evening at Mad Miss Mollie's with delicious sandwiches/wraps.  

Very hyggeligt!

Even though it was a very chilly (and windy!) day in Sweden, Caitlin and I both agreed it was worth it. One thing I really noticed about being in another country was that it felt much more foreign to me than Denmark.  I definitely don't speak dansk (the Danish language) well, but I have grown fairly accustomed to seeing it on signs and hearing it all around me.  I knew right away that the words on the signs were not dansk.  The city was similar to København, but in general the feel was just different.  It was so fun to explore, but I surprised myself by missing the familarity of 'gade'  and 'vej' (the words most street names end in) and little things like that. It was also a bit of a challenge to mentally convert Swedish kroner to Danish kroner to American dollar.  I'm honestly not sure how much I spent yesterday...guess I'll find out once I get my mastercard bill :P  I think one does't realize how much a place feels like home until he/she is no longer there.  I'm probably being dramatic since I was only gone a mere 9 hours...but it was kind of nice to be confronted with that home feeling upon returning to Denmark.  Aww, happiness :)

Well, I hope all of you at home enjoyed the mental trip to Sweden and are enjoying the wonderful weather where you are... if you get a chance send some my way!! 

Godnat  <3