Pfingstenpause (an excuse to Vacation) Part IV

Sunday
(This photo was taken at Skansen outdoor museum. I find it funny, because there are lilacs and bleeding hearts in the photo, both of which are also hardy in Minnesota weather. Since everyone understands Sweden for being cold, what does this mean about Minnesota?)

Last day in Stockholm. After the last night being so late, we didn’t wake up until around 10:00, which was the check out time. So we leave for lunch at a Sushi Bar that Ben & Christine found. They love sushi, like I love pork. I end up ordering something random to find out it’s just cucumbers in rice. Dang it.
We part ways, never knowing if we’ll see each other again. I head out to train station to board for Malmö, located in the Southwest corner of Sweden directly across from Copenhagen, Denmark. After boarding the train, I realize that my seat doesn’t exist—the ticket is fully valid, but the seats go to #80 and I have #83. So I sit in another train car and happen to meet a great girl, Irena, with whom I had a fantastic chat for almost 4 hours from Stockholm to her stop. She is a Polish Swede, who works for the Navy and commutes every weekend.
The best was the inside joke of a market square (a platz) that was the skirt of a cow (like the female cow in the Mickey Mouse cartoons), but purple like the Milka Milk Chocolate cow, who gets up and runs off. But the bell that’s around her neck rings when she runs away, so all the shops around there hear it and change their signs accordingly.
Finally arrive in Malmö and head to hostel, grab dinner, meet my roommates. One is an old Ukrainian and the other is a young man from Bavaria, Germany.

Monday
Sven, the Bavarian who works as a prison guard in Kempten and is 28 years old, and I decide to hang out in the city together. First walking to the North Harbor we follow the shore to see the “Turning Torso”, Sweden’s tallest building. Further along is all park and shoreline, but looking into the sea we unfortunately can’t see Copenhagen and/or the bridge due to the day’s fog.
Coming back to the city we grab lunch at an Imbiss (a stand in the platz selling fast simple foods) in front of the courthouse. Afterwards we check the harbor again, but the fog hadn’t lifted. Next on the list of sights to see we find Gustav Adolf’s Platz, their largest Park (Pildamsparken), the Stadium, and then what we thought was the University (turns out it was simply a hospital). Walking north from the southern part of the city, we pass about four more sights to see and check them off the list. Ending at the river, we rent a paddleboat for an hour to zip around the river running through and around the city. Making it in 40 minutes, the last 20 minutes was a soothing float along the path. To my surprise, one block from where we met the boats we find Ernst & Young’s Malmö office.
Back to the hostel for restaurant recommendations, we head to the first place that ended up taking up 15 minutes of waiting just to get a menu—scratch that. Next is a self-service restaurant where we grabbed steaks in a melted herbal butter sauce. After dinner and a discussion on the court systems in Germany we look for another bar to grab a beer but most were closed (already at 11:00 p.m.). Finally we come across Lila’s Torg where there were a dozen bars still open around one central square.
Heading back to the hostel to call it a day, I realized the entire day was spent speaking German because, surprisingly, my German was better than his English (that’s a first for me). And at the end of the day, we saw 32 of the 34 “sights to see” in Malmö.