Sweden

Shawn (a friend from Uni) has moved from London to Helsingborg in Sweden so we felt it was a good excuse to head north. Brendan and his girlfriend Emma also came over for the weekend from London and Siobhan came over from Lincoln. We flew up to Copenhagen early on Saturday morning and then took a train into the centre of town. We had a quick look around the central area in the cold air. It was ok, but not spectacular. The same could be said of the pastries. We had come with high hopes of sampling real “danishes” – the pastry with fruit and custard fillings you get in Australia. It turns out that these aren’t the real thing and there is no matching snack in a real Danish bakery. The closest thing was a very sweet pastry called a Spandauer which didn’t have much filling and was more a spiral than a pocket of pastry. Oh well…

I also found Copenhagen a little plain. I think living in Milan for a few months has made me used to a constant collision of colour, noise, people and traffic and Copenhagen just seemed a little quiet. I'm not sure what I will think of Australian cities when I get home...

We then caught a train across to Malmo and then north along the Swedish coast to Helsingborg. It is a nice town set on the water looking across to Helsingor and its castle on the Danish shore. Although small this was a nice change from Milan and also from London for Shawn. We looked around town in the afternoon and had a snack on the waterside. Dinner was at a nearby Swiss restaurant and we kicked on to small nightclub where Brendan wowed the locals with his style on the dance floor.

Sunday morning Kath and I had a nice walk on the waterfront before a quick lunch. We all got the train back to Copenhagen and had a look around the Tivoli fun park. It was quite fun (despite the cold) and we ate dinner at nice restaurant on the lake that brewed its own beer. We then headed to the airport to fly home and left Shawn heading back north on the train.