Malmö
Friday May 23rd 2003
The Stansted Express is run by geniuses of the highest calibre. They had decided that the May bank holiday weekend was the perfect time to cancel all the trains to do some maintenance work. Catching an early flight to Malmö required me to arrive at Stansted the night before and sleep on the floor. So I was not in a great mood when we arrived in Sweden. It was raining heavily.
Luckily the sun broke through the rain. We headed into town, wandering randomly and stopping for coffees and hot dogs on the way. We ended up at Västra Hamnen, where grey skies made the Öresund look threatening. The bridge to Denmark looked pretty impressive, and we were looking forward to heading into a new country the next day.
Rundetårn
Saturday May 24th 2003
We headed into Denmark. The plan was to meet my brother there - he'd flown out a day after us instead of taking a cheeky Friday off work, and he'd flown straight to Copenhagen. We hadn't made any firm or reliable plan to meet up, so it was good luck that when the train we were on stopped at Kastrup, Andrew got on it.
The three of us went to have a look around, and found our way to the Rundetårn. We went up to the top, and despite the grey day, the views over the city were pretty good.
Spiders of Copenhagen
Saturday May 24th 2003
It was a beautiful day in Copenhagen. We had been to a club the night before, and when we came out at 5am it was already a warm sunny day. A few doors away from the club we found a 24 hour Danish pastry shop. It was the best thing that could possibly have happened to us at that point.
After a bit of sleep we went exploring, slowly wandering from cafe to cafe along Strøget. We passed one of Louise Bourgois's spider scupltures which was in residence in Kongens Nytorv.
Christiania
Sunday May 25th 2003
With some people we'd met in a club the previous night, we went to Christiania, a self-declared independent state which has occupied a former military barracks since 1971. We wandered in to the free state and onto its main street, Pusher Street, where lots of small stands sold weed.
We spent a long time in Christiania. It was a hot summer day, and it was a nice place to be. What I didn't appreciate for a while was that I was getting sunburnt, but by the time we left, I was turning very red, and already feeling the pain. Somehow I hadn't really thought it would even be possible to get sunburnt so far north.
Back to Sweden
Monday May 26th 2003
We headed back across the Öresund. Malmö is not nearly as fun as Copenhagen, and we didn't do much except find our way to a coffee shop and chill out there. In the evening, Andrew left to get a night train to Berlin. He was just at the start of a longer trip. For me and Eldrik, though, this one was over. We got the bus to the airport and headed home.