Malmo, Swedan

malmo, swedan

today marked a pebble-sized milestone in my travel endeavours- an impromptu trip to malmo, swedan (the motherland of ikea and h&m)!

kiku msn-ed me around ten-ish to ask if i was interested and this being just another day reserved for vegetating, i thought, "why not".. the two of us were the epitome of efficiency- we only reach the central station at 10:55am and the train was due to leave at 11:03am.. we still had to find train tickets, grab breakfast and cash from the atm. amazingly, we accomplished all that in six minutes, with the queues at mcdonalds' being expectedly long and the wait staff unexpected slow.

our train ride was a smooth 45-min journey across the oresund bridge and it was a good thing we managed to obtain a tourist-friendly map from the information counter. the must-sees or to-dos of swedan's third largest city are situated around around the same area- Stortorget and Lilla Torg. as the main shopping district was nearly ramrod straight, malmo actually felt alot like the softer, less-edgey cousin of inner copenhagen. charming little boutiques and imposing shopping centres share the limelight within the arena and with the crowds weaving in and out, this is probably as busy as it gets here in malmo downtown. a walk from Lilla Torg leads you to Gustav Adolf's Torg, which is another popular meeting/ shopping square.

my highlight of the walk would definitely be the visit to the form/design center. a modest hole in the wall, the display space was clean-cut and well, nothing to harp about but i took delight in the quizzical items for sale in their shop. from the eccentric anna kyyro quinn felt cushions to the rocking horse bunny, there was a need for brat-control, otherwise there would have been numerous 'i want!' outbursts. i even spent quite a while screening the fabric textiles, many of which i had every desire to incorporate into my blog background.

we took a break at the triangln centre where I had the most expensive cheesecake in my entire life- 29 swedish kronas which converts to roughly S$6+. ok I know it doesn't seem like much when i blog about it, but let's not forget three magic words- STUDENT ON BUDGET and back in Singapore, i thought it was ridiculous to pay S$5.50 for a slice from starbucks and this was half the size of a normal starbucks..

the taste verdict? a bite into it almost made me regret the initial begrudging. It. Was. That. Good. the cheesecake looked ordinary, the ingredients seemed commomplace but there was just something about it that heightened the pleasure buds on my tongue. was it the discernly-fresh strawberries? or the sensous cake which melted as i rolled it over my tongue? maybe it was even the biscuit base, reminiscent of carb-goodness.. but very likely, it was the combination of all three factors PLUS creamserved on the side.

traditional swedish architecture>

after tea, we made our way to Malmohus Castle, which was unforgivingly anti-climaxal. perhaps, missing the opening hours of the museum contributed to my lack of enthusiasm cum understanding but i just wasn't very impressed with the red brick architecture. from a distance, the turning-torso structure was by far more impressive.

otherwise, i had a great time in malmo. i can't wait to google all the scandinavian designs and find out more about them..