Malmö, Sweden

Yesterday I went into Malmö Sweden with James, Stephen, Adam (from Hungary), Keita and Shota (from Japan). Malmö is the third largest city in Sweden and is the capitol city of Skåne, one of the 25 provinces of Sweden. To get there we went across Øresund bridge which connects Denmark and Sweden and is nearly 5 miles long (for perspective, Golden Gate is not even 2 miles long). While we were there we went to the seaside, strolled in their walking mall, viewed the Torso tower, climbed on a small rock wall, got free Dr. Pepper, and walked in a cool garden. Here are some pictures from the day.

This is the bridge that connects Denmark and Sweden

The choppy Baltic sea

How cool would it be to live in one of these?

The Twisting Torso, a really cool apartment building

Can you tell why it's called the twisting torso?

What an amazing building! Also, note the greenhouse shaped like a dome

More cool buildings

Cool apartments right on the Baltic sea

In this highly developed country, some areas were, uh, still "being developed"

We definitely were not taking the scenic route here

Random bouldering protrusions

Free Dr. P

Malmohus Castle

St. Peter's Church

The Stortorget

Accordion player contributed to the overall classy atmosphere of the walking mall 

Another cool building, a school I think?

FC København Løverne

This week Stephen, James and Christian (student from Norway) went to the kickoff game for the Champions league. What is the Champions league? The Champions league is the most important European football tournament that lasts from September to May. To give you an idea of how popular this is, the final match for the last tournament attracted more viewers than any other single annual sporting event (including the Super Bowl). The tournament is made up of the 32 most competitive European teams from all over the region with the best teams coming from England and Spain (probably). These teams are split up into 8 groups of 4 teams each who play each other twice each, once at "home" in their own country and once "away". Each group advances two of the four teams. This year the Copenhagen Lions have made the tournament and it just so happened that they played on the opening night. Anyways to cut a long story short, Copenhagen won by scoring the only goal of the game with a head shot at the 87th minute of the game (a football game lasts 90 minutes so this was 3 minutes before the game ended). Needless to say, it was a really exciting match. Here are some pictures from the event.

The football stadium

The Copenhagen Lions logo. Good shot of the inside of the stadium.

The incredibly rowdy section. 

The goal that Copenhagen was shooting on in the second half.

Some of the action

We got great views of the corner kicks!

It rained on and off. 

Doesn't the rain look cool?

This picture shows where we were in relation to the stadium

VICTORY!

It was really cool. At the end of the game, the Copenhagen players walked around the entire stadium and applauded the fans! This is not something that I'm used to seeing at sporting events. I thought it showed humility and gratitude that is not normal in a lot of professional sports.

Frederiksborg Slot

Recently James, Stephen, Adam (student from Hungary) and I went on a 30 miles (round trip) bike ride to one of Denmarks best castles, Fredericksburg. It was a lot of fun. I'd never ridden that far before but it wasn't too bad. Here are some pictures: 

Stephen, James and Adam

Quick Fix

Our First Sighting

The Flag of Denmark

Cool Gardens

The Castle Entrance

The Castle Court

In the Court

Walking into the 2nd Court

Both Courts

Inside one hall

One of 25 pictures showing the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This one is of the angel announcing Jesus' birth to the sheppards

The burial and resurrection

By far the most striking room of the castle: the chapel

The chapel was covered in huge wall paintings

Cool stainglass window

This was the 2nd largest room in the castle and probably the most ornate: the ballroom

Slot = castle in danish.