Weekend in Southern Sweden
22/07/2013I spent the first weekend in July in southern Sweden, one of my fave places on the planet. I was working in London for a couple weeks, so I took the weekend in between to come see my friend Philip in Lund. As per usual, summer in Sweden was incredible.
My first attempt at speaking Swedish again in the wild was total fail, at helping a dude at the Lund train station buy a ticket from Helsingborg to Halmstad which didn’t even work (but to my delight I at least figured out what he was asking me, and responded in semi-Swedish).
I boarded the wrong bus because Lund is so familiar to me that I don’t even pay attention trying to navigate it. I waited at Botulfsplatsen for the opposite bus near these buildings which didn’t exist last time I was here.
My first night in Sweden was so typisk it almost felt like I’d never left at all. We pre-fested with Philip’s friend, Björn, #obviously. They tried to feed me red wine champagne without telling me what it was, but it’s a bit hard to slip that one past. Then we went to a party of a guy named Henrik, who I didn’t know, but a different Henrik I did know was there as well #EveryoneIsNamedHenrik.
Afterwards, we went to Björn’s apartment where he fed us his homemade ~*~bacon dip~*~ (Americans, take note here).
The next morning I awoke to this:
Yay Swedish interiors:
Daytime means time to go find yourself some local strawberries and sit outside:
In my familiar, lovely spot in the Botaniska:
Others avoided the shade and worked on their tans:
Toilets, because why not:
Obviously, grilling for dinner:
#Haloumi & ananas:
A few weeks ago, I rescued some friends of friends of friends, three Swedes misfortunate enough to be traveling in San Francisco the week of Pride without booking a hostel in advance. My San Francisco apartment, woefully underused, became their crashpad for 3 days and in return, they told me I could hang out in their Malmö apartment when I was in Sweden. Malmö is just ten minutes by train from Lund but I’d never had the opportunity to hang there much, so this was clearly destiny. Major props to Polly for helping this destiny fall into place.
We arrived at their Malmö apartment Saturday night, hung out in the neighborhood (called Möllan, a great neighborhood) — went to the pub literally downstairs, then wandered through Folkets Park to hit up Debaser. The whole park is lined with bars and clubs and partying outdoors. Perfect summer vibe.
The club kicked people out around 3 AM, so I went back to watch the sunrise on the apartment’s balcony, various people walking home on the street below, and neighbors across the street awake watching TV at 4 AM, (who woke up bright & early just to blast Robin Thicke to the entire neighborhood).
In the daylight Melanie & Calle’s apartment became wonderfully photogenic.
I am ever impressed by their ability to keep a jungle of plants alive (also, a stuffed bird, though not alive!)
That day we wandered around Malmö which seemed oddly empty and there was nothing to eat (all the restaurants opened at 2 PM, it was earlier than that and we were hungry). We did stumble into this, though #swedishgenderroles:
Turns out, everyone was at the beach, which was packed like Dolo on a warm San Francisco day. We sat on the pier out in the water, with great views of the Öresund bridge, the Ribersborgs Bath House (which is really awesome, btw), and the Turning Torso.
It was warm enough to swim, but I wasn’t about to jump in the water and be all soggy for my flight back to London. Oh well.
And with that, my yearly pilgrimage to Sweden was complete. The biggest discovery of this trip was that as a non-student now, Malmö makes a lot more sense / appeals to me more than ever before (and more than Lund now, in fact). Also, plastic eating utensils on male mannequins.
