· Mal ... what?Malmö, Sweden · 15th Jan 2007 · Posted by Chris
Man, so many places with names that have letters with funny squiggly things over them! And this place is no exception. This time we're in Malmö, Sweden and we pretty quickly discovered that all us tourists are WAY off in our guessed pronunciation of this city's name. Malmo? Nope. Malmoo? Close. We found out that the right way to say this is more like Malmuuuuu hehehe. Plenty of hilarity when we heard the loudspeakers announce that we were in fact in Malmuuuuuuu Centruuuuuul Station. :)
When we arrived the gods most definitely weren't smiling and it looked like someone had decided to have another go at drowning a city to the point where we'd all need a dude called called Noah and an arc to survive. Yep, it was raining that hard. So with jackets done up, boots laced and packs on our backs we set off for a hostel that we hoped would be open/not full. This time we found a bit of luck as the place we ended up was pretty much brand new. A hostel nonetheless but in immaculate condition. They'd decided to make all the doors similar to doors in a prison because to get through them you had to press a button and a gigantic CLUNK greeted you before the door swung open as if by magic. Ok so prisons don't have buttons but the doors were as heavy as cell doors, no doubt about that. After unloading our packs which by this stage weighed roughly the same as a Japanese Sumo wrestler we went for a look around.
Just down the road from our hostel (whick thankfully isn't anything like the ones from the movie of the same name) was one of the famous Hilton hotels. Very flash. I hate to think what a night in the Hilton would cost ... and for all you dirty people out there I'm talking about the hotel, not the celebrity. :P
Another of the endless shopping streets wasn't far away and as you all know Annie and I absolutely hate shopping of all kinds and haven't bought anything on this trip yet so naturally we had to check it out. Shoes and clothes are the main theme as per usual but in this part of Europe there seem to be more cellphone shops than anything else. Then again, this is Sweden, the home of Nokia. It's actually pronounced "No-kee-ah" by the way, not "knock-ya" like most people in NZ say ... hehe. ;)
In true hostel style we had to cook our first meal in the guest kitchen here! Mmmmmm pasta ... so easy hehehe. While we were in the kitchen (I was on cooking duty) we had c chat to 2 guys from Zurich who at one stage asked us how much people from NZ like people from Australia. They seemed to find that chat pretty funny ... can't imagine why. ;) We then yarned about how Germans can't understand Swiss German so it's great for the Swiss when they go to Germany as they can hassle the Germans in German without them even understanding! The poor guys had issues with their dinner so being the friendly kiwis that we are we shared our dinner with them. Awww aren't we nice? :)
The next day found us going to visit one of the local attractions, a castle, complete with moat that has an aquarium in the middle. Pretty standard contents there but one of the dry-land exhibits had something called a Slow Loris. I reckon when the creators of the English language thought of the word "mooch" they were watching a Slow Loris. We watched him walk ... hang on, he didn't walk. He's too slow for that. We watched him MOOCH from one side of his glass enclosure to the other in record time - about 10 minutes. The mooching part comes in because the enclosure is only about 3 metres across! The ironic part is that he shares his domain with these little squirrel-looking things that actually have a form of wing under their front legs. They're SUPER hyperactive and only serve to sort out any delusions about whether or not Mr Loris does in fact mooch. I love that word. :)
Back at the hostel we found the TV room and joined a couple of older ladies watching Poirot. I can only describe this as Cluedo brought to life. No! It was the butler! And he klled her in the dining room with the candlestick! Ok so the culprit actually did it with his bare hands on the beach but it was worth watching anyway. Everyone reading this has the right to accuse me of being random for telling you about that. hehehe
By the way. the last few places we've blogged from have either been internet cafes or other places where we can't plug in our cameras in order to upload photos so sorry about the lack of those lately.
From here it's back to Denmark to check out Copenhagen.
Bye!
When we arrived the gods most definitely weren't smiling and it looked like someone had decided to have another go at drowning a city to the point where we'd all need a dude called called Noah and an arc to survive. Yep, it was raining that hard. So with jackets done up, boots laced and packs on our backs we set off for a hostel that we hoped would be open/not full. This time we found a bit of luck as the place we ended up was pretty much brand new. A hostel nonetheless but in immaculate condition. They'd decided to make all the doors similar to doors in a prison because to get through them you had to press a button and a gigantic CLUNK greeted you before the door swung open as if by magic. Ok so prisons don't have buttons but the doors were as heavy as cell doors, no doubt about that. After unloading our packs which by this stage weighed roughly the same as a Japanese Sumo wrestler we went for a look around.
Just down the road from our hostel (whick thankfully isn't anything like the ones from the movie of the same name) was one of the famous Hilton hotels. Very flash. I hate to think what a night in the Hilton would cost ... and for all you dirty people out there I'm talking about the hotel, not the celebrity. :P
Another of the endless shopping streets wasn't far away and as you all know Annie and I absolutely hate shopping of all kinds and haven't bought anything on this trip yet so naturally we had to check it out. Shoes and clothes are the main theme as per usual but in this part of Europe there seem to be more cellphone shops than anything else. Then again, this is Sweden, the home of Nokia. It's actually pronounced "No-kee-ah" by the way, not "knock-ya" like most people in NZ say ... hehe. ;)
In true hostel style we had to cook our first meal in the guest kitchen here! Mmmmmm pasta ... so easy hehehe. While we were in the kitchen (I was on cooking duty) we had c chat to 2 guys from Zurich who at one stage asked us how much people from NZ like people from Australia. They seemed to find that chat pretty funny ... can't imagine why. ;) We then yarned about how Germans can't understand Swiss German so it's great for the Swiss when they go to Germany as they can hassle the Germans in German without them even understanding! The poor guys had issues with their dinner so being the friendly kiwis that we are we shared our dinner with them. Awww aren't we nice? :)
The next day found us going to visit one of the local attractions, a castle, complete with moat that has an aquarium in the middle. Pretty standard contents there but one of the dry-land exhibits had something called a Slow Loris. I reckon when the creators of the English language thought of the word "mooch" they were watching a Slow Loris. We watched him walk ... hang on, he didn't walk. He's too slow for that. We watched him MOOCH from one side of his glass enclosure to the other in record time - about 10 minutes. The mooching part comes in because the enclosure is only about 3 metres across! The ironic part is that he shares his domain with these little squirrel-looking things that actually have a form of wing under their front legs. They're SUPER hyperactive and only serve to sort out any delusions about whether or not Mr Loris does in fact mooch. I love that word. :)
Back at the hostel we found the TV room and joined a couple of older ladies watching Poirot. I can only describe this as Cluedo brought to life. No! It was the butler! And he klled her in the dining room with the candlestick! Ok so the culprit actually did it with his bare hands on the beach but it was worth watching anyway. Everyone reading this has the right to accuse me of being random for telling you about that. hehehe
By the way. the last few places we've blogged from have either been internet cafes or other places where we can't plug in our cameras in order to upload photos so sorry about the lack of those lately.
From here it's back to Denmark to check out Copenhagen.
Bye!
