Swede ride, brå !

A Road Trip from Malmö to Stockholm

(bear with us, this covers quite a few Swedish miles….that’s 10 kilometres each in Sweden)

Turan was on his way to Finland to visit family, and had always wanted to see Sweden with the wind in his hair. We quickly adopted the same desire. ROAD TRIP!

Our next stop was a lengthy 20 minute train ride across the Öresund (the strait that separates Denmark and Sweden) to stay the night in Malmö before picking up our rental car. Though we spent less than 24 hours in Sweden’s third largest city, we actually got to see a lot. We spent about an hour booking our room with the Wifi at Maxburger (Sweden’s McDonald’s competitor) in the Main Square, walked to our hotel through their second, more adorable square, and got lost on our way out of the city, making a detour to the Turning Torso tower andbeautiful views of the Öresund. Our rental car was a perky little Renault hatchback that was pushing 100 horse power, and our first road trip stop was to cross the bridge from whence we came to return to Denmark.

The Öresund bridge is very cool; it begins in Sweden as a suspension bridge, then on a manmade island halfway across the sound, the bridge descends into an underwater tunnel that allows boat traffic to pass over the car and train traffic. The descent makes your ears pop and only lets you see about 20 yards in front of you because it’s so steep. Pretty cool stuff.

Once back in Denmark, we waved a final goodbye to our old friend Copenhagen and began our drive up the East coast of Zealand (the O.G.), stuck behind slow moving cars on confusing streets ending in ‘gade and ‘veg with lots of dots and lines through the vowels. We were headed to Kronborg castle in Helsingør, the fictional setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. After the day’s drive, we made it to the castle with 30 minutes to spare before close.

We literally ran the half-mile from the car to the castle entrance, passing over two moats and through several castle gates – but we were not to be deterred by such fortifications. And we proved the wary ticket cashier wrong, packing in 2 hours worth of castle exhibits into an efficient 15 minute jog. The castle was amazing, dating back to the 15th century. It was originally built here on the shore of the narrowest part of the Öresund to collect tolls from

passing ships. The castle has been very meticulously restored and maintained. After the tour of the interior, we wandered the gorgeous grounds, including a courtyard and the aforementioned moats – which had been used as a toilet for hundreds of years before the castle became a museum. It was a very difficult cleanup job, according to the brochure.

When we finished our castle tour, we drove the car onto a ferry to cross back over to Sweden at Helsingborg (not to be confused with Helsingør across the water) and took a two-hour drive through multiple rainstorms to another AirBnb which we didn’t have the address for in a small town we’d never heard of. All we knew was the street name the house was on and that the house was yellow. After 30 minutes of spirited debate over tans, golds, and mustards, we found the house just before midnight. We’d arranged for the owner to leave the door unlocked since we were arriving so late.

We walked into an unlit, unstaffed, uninhabited, creaky and creepy farmhouse bed and breakfast from the 1920’s. Robin found it charming.

Turan and David felt like they were in the opening act of a horror film. The ceilings were low enough to bump your head on, and the spiral staircase to the 3rd floor was hardly wide enough to fit a suitcase. In spite of it all, we ended up all sleeping very well and the place and the owner, Kennet, were adorable.

The next day we got to see the beautiful Swedish countryside. We drove an hour to visit Sweden’s second city, Göteburg, the home of Volvo. We had ourselves a lovely “fika,” meaning “to have a coffee and buns and a chat with friends,” (yes, there is actually a word for that) and a stroll around Haga, the old district. Then it was on to our next stop, Ödeshög. Just east of the 6th biggest lake in all of Europe! We arrived in the city of literally hundreds of residents at an early 8pm. All the shops and restaurants in the city were closed.

Except one, a pizzeria owned by our hotel owner’s relatives. Ordering was an exciting adventure, trying to explain that we didn’t want any pork products to the two Syrian employees who didn’t know any English. But, after a week of encountering Danes and Swedes with impeccable English, the exchange felt happily foreign. We ended up with two Greek themed pizzas that were delicious.

The next morning we explored the breezy shores of Lake Vattern, and then we were off to Stockholm – through small villages, pastoral landscapes, and lake and river views. We decided to visit the archipelago first and drove straight to Vaxholm. The archipelago is made up of 30,000 islands. We hit 3. It seemed to be past tourism season there, so it was not a lively scene. But the scenery was gorgeous, especially from the ferries from island to island. After a good lunch of fish from Norway, we left the archipelago on its free ferries and into Stockholm. And that is a story for another blog entry.

Best Eats:
Clif Bars, McDonald’s, and Maxburger (x2)

Any restaurants open after 6pm

Best Laughs:
Turan, on arrival at the creepy farmhouse hotel: “Why don’t you go explore the town, you check out the rest of the hotel, and I’ll keep an eye on things up here.”

Robin repeatedly asking an elderly, nearly deaf non-English speaker for parking information.

A drunk Dane stumbling into the Maxburger in Malmo harassing Swedish teens about how to deal with hoodlums. “If they have a gun, then you worry about them. If not, you mess with them.” [pregnant pause] “Tha’s how vee do it in Copenhagen!” (you had to be there)

Packing, booking, and moving as fast as we could across the city to catch our train to Malmö, only to get there and realize they run every 20 minutes all night.

Best Times:
The roads in Sweden can be confusing. David drove onto an elevated tram platform in Goteborg (and had to wait between 2 trams picking up passengers before he could hop the curb to get back on the street), ended up on a pedestrian main square in Odeshög (thankfully the town had gone to sleep at sunset), and manueuvered us into the bus-only lane in downtown Stockholm, where “our” traffic signal on the 5 way intersection only had a lit up white “S”.

The highlight of our jog through the royal apartments at Kronborg: a full-out sprint down the largest ballroom we’d ever seen (in a castle).