So this weekend I finally did some traveling. I suppose in the end it will pale in comparison to my trip this weekend to Spain, but nonetheless Malmo was a pretty cool place. Just under an hour bus ride from downtown Copenhagen is a small city called Malmo, Sweden. To get there you must travel over a very long bridge. I'd say it's the longest but I really don't know that for sure. According to Wikipedia.org the Oresund Bridge is about 7.8 km long which makes it about as long as the Bay Bridge. It is really cool looking because first you travel under a tunnel before you even get to the bridge and the aerial views are quite remarkable.
Once the whole group had arrived we traveled to the central train station to pick up some brochures on what to do in Malmo before we went to see the Turning Torso. The Turning Torso was some architect's greatest dream and some engineer's greatest nightmare. Basically, the tower turns a full ninety degrees from the bottom to the top. Standing 190 meters high, it is one of the tallest buildings in the whole Scandanavian region. This was pretty much the only thing Malmo had to offer.
After seeing the tower, we proceeded to a spot on the shore where we could see out to bridge and really just take in the view. Bernat, Raul, Nacho, and Andy arranged a group photo which was really quite impressive and took some patience.
After this, we trekked all the way across the city to a rather unimpressive fort.
Then we were led back across to the main town square. At this point we were told we were on our own for the rest of the day. It was only noon and we had till quarter past seven to catch the bus so needless to say we had a lot of time to kill.
A small motley crew of us...
headed out with no plan or care. First things first, we were hungry and although I had brought a lunch, along with Lukasz (we are terribly cheap and cannot seem to be helped), the others had not. We found an inexpensive kebab place for lunch and sat down and tried to at least plan something out. We located a large park on the map and decided to head for there.
The park was pretty cool. There were two small lakes and an ampitheatre and the strangest thing (other than ourselves) were these hills located behind the ampitheatre. The strange thing about them was just how steep the grade was and unnatural they were next to the overly flat landscape of Malmo.
While continuing our walk around the park, Luis at one point decided it was a good idea to take a picture with his shirt off. Something about standing where it looked like a statue belonged and posing as a statue would. Anyway, there would be three more occasions where he would pose shirtless. He would also inspire Michael to lose his top when he was up in a tree. We were trying really hard to fit in.
Around four o'clock we had had enough and began to head back. Upon taking a shortcut we stumbled upon a woman whose cat had gotten stuck in a tree. Luis remarked how he thought that only happened in cartoons and when Michael began to shout at the cat to jump from his three story height to the ground, we thought it was a good time to get going.
Here is the cat, and I really hope he got down safely. Luis also noted that he probably had more lives left anyway.
After seeing the cat, we went to an art museum, mainly because it was free and it was still open on a Saturday afternoon. The most memorable piece was an apple on a table. My peers were awfully critical of this piece and most of the installations claiming they were not art. Art really is a funny thing most of the time.
Following the exhibit we still had time to kill so we went to a McDonald's and met some other people from our group and just relaxed.
As night fell, some people gathered with candles on the square for the International Day for Women which occurs on March 8th. In countries such as Latvia and Poland women receive flowers on this day from male friends of theirs. I think this is pretty remarkable. I think I may have to partake in this next year, if I remember.
A short while later we headed back to the bus stop, played a little football, and boarded the bus back home. Shortly after eight we arrived at Copenhagen station. We took the train back to Lyngby and crashed for a little before my roommates and I prepared some fantastic pasta. After the pasta we headed to some dormatories nearby for a party we had heard about, but it turned out to not be much of anything. It was the four of us (Luis, Daniel, Andy, and myself) and about a dozen Danish students who didn't talk to us. It wasn't so bad because they had a free pool table and we played about three games of pool. Following this we headed back. Two people to a bike. Let me tell you, this is not the most comfortable way to ride, but it gets the job done.
1 comments:
nice bridge :)
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