We should Swede this film!

The title of this post does not make as much sense as I would like it to, but if you're a fan of Michel Gondry's 'Be Kind Rewind' you'll understand it's a reference to that.

L and I visited a friend of ours, Hannes, in Lund (pictured) on Thursday.  It's a pleasant student town where everything seems cheaper than Copenhagen except for alcohol, which is monopolised.

We hung out at Hannes' student residence and had a big night with a few of his dorm mates (pictured).  During the partying, I couldn't help but wonder whether I would've had a more fun time in Lund than I currently am in Copenhagen.  I remember Lund was originally my first preference on my exchange application, but I switched it to Copenhagen at the 11th hour, believing Copenhagen would have the social aspect of Lund plus more in terms of attractions, cultural events and things to do.  Oh how wrong I was.  Seeing Hannes socialise with his flat mates and hearing his stories about the almost-daily Nations parties made me realise how silly it was for me to consider the social aspects of Lund and Copenhagen to be comparable.  I believe Lund is definitely a better place than Copenhagen if you want to live a partying lifestyle and constantly meet people.  However, it is a small town where after a couple of hours I felt that I had completely explored the town.  For someone like me who's travelled across the world to see Scandinavia, I think Copenhagen was a better choice in that it's a better base in terms of weekend travel trips, and because there are lots of 'artsy' things to do which align with my interests more than partying.  However, I find that with all my friends in Copenhagen living so far from each other and the lack of large and frequent parties, this has stifled my ability to meet and get to know as many people as I would have had I lived in Lund.

On our way back to Copenhagen, L and I decided to stop by Malmo (pictured), the third biggest city of Sweden.

There are three reasons why I (and I know many people do) would shop at Malmo over Copenhagen:

1. There is no shortage of unusual public art in the shopping district (pictured below)
2. It's cheaper to shop there than Copenhagen (but it's still Scandinavia, therefore, more expensive than the rest of the world!)
3. They have everything* you need in their large stores and malls. [*probably not mythical creatures]

After bugging the lady at the Malmo Tourist Office, she let us use her phone to call our friend Gustav (who we met in Hong Kong on exchange years ago) unexpectedly.  We were extremely fortunate in that he was able to take time off work on such short notice to catch up with us for a lovely drink!

For Leah and I, it was amazing how many friends from our exchange in Hong Kong we caught up with in the last couple weeks.  For instance, last week in Amsterdam we also met up with Remco (Dutch), Marion (Dutch), Cornelius (German) and Victor (Dutch) for the first time in years.