Sweden 25th – 27th May

My flight to Copenhagen had onboard entertainment in the form of a group of lads who were on there way to a 3-day bucks party. Lee, the groom, was wearing a fetching multi coloured sleeveless summer dress and a very pretty blond wig. Dale, sitting next to me, kept me entertained with a discussion over who discovered Australia (I knew it was Cook but could not remember his first name for the life of me), reasons to visit Australia and what constitutes a Geezer.

Seeing Cas and Hakan again was fantastic and we had a great weekend with another excellent ‘accidental’ tourist discovery.

When I arrived on Friday night we went out to dinner and then had a reasonably early night.

Saturday we started with a trip to the Chocolate Factory Mazetti Chocolate Factory in Malmo – turns out the chocolate factory / museum / café is about the size of a standard living room but was fun all the same and the chocolates delicious!

Chocolate Molds

Chocolate Shop

We then went in search of a castle as I felt my visits to the Nordic countries was very incomplete without a visit to a fairytale castle. On the way to find a castle we stumbled across the most stunning park and ended up stopping there. Despite having asked Hakan about 6 times what the Swedish name for the park was it will now be referred to as the Narnia park. It was so green! There were towering trees, an avenue of which had been trimmed into neat rows. It was filled with beautiful fountains and gorgeous stone sculptures. You could really picture it covered in snow and would have made the perfect setting for the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I’ve Googled the name of the park and it’s Pildammsparken…

Pildammsparken

The biggest park in Malmö was laid out in preparation for the Baltic Expo in 1914. The Margareta Pavilion and the "Echo Temple" are still standing from that time. Pildammsparken was completed in the 1920s according to the ideals of classicism under the direction of city engineer Erik Bülow-Hube. Today, the main features of the park are rich and varied bird life, gorgeous flower beds and joggers. Free theatre performances and concerts are presented during the summer in the open-air theatre at Pildammsparken.

It was then back to Lund for another party at Cas and Hakans’ place. There were a few familiar faces from the last party, especially ‘pony-tail Martin’ who is lovely and very thoughtful about non-Swedish speakers!

Cas made me the most delicious breakfasts both morning and the eggs, tomato and avocado tasted like the first ‘real’ food I’d eaten in a long time – the fruit veg from the supermarket are pretty tasteless and are obviously “chemically enhanced”.

A quick trip to look at a castle this morning and then back to the airport today and believe it or not the same bucks party and one of the other groups of guys who was on my flight over. However, I think they were all recovery from the weekend and were much quieter this time!

The Castle

Another 2 weeks of work in London and then I will be jobless but happy! Then onto Greece with P&T on the 8^th.